^ee? 



^: 



g LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. ;> 



Chap. ^ 3 ^ 
She/f , C, 1 7 



4 



*, 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ,' 

y^ ^ ^ y ■^. '^ -^y^-■^ '^. ^^^- ^y ^^ ^.T ^ ^'-^ .^ 



.^ 



REPLY 



TO THE LETTER 



OF 



J. FENIMORE COOPER 



BY 



ONE OF HIS COUNTRYMEN 



CoL-veio ^v*.sV\\riQ' 



BOSTON. 

PUBLISHED ny J. T. BUCKINGHAM 

1834. 



TO J. FENIMORE COOPER. 






I EXERCISE a common right, as one of your country- 
men, in replying to some passages of the Letter, which 
you have recently addressed to tlie whole people of the 
United States. In doing this, it is no part of my design 
to comment pai'ticularly on those topics of alleged person- 
al grievance, which occupy the chief part of your com- 
munication. We, of the general mass of your fellows-cit- 
izens, who were accustomed to read your works with 
delight, — who admired your genius, — who knew you only 
as an eminently popular novelist, — who prized your lite- 
rary reputation as parcel of our own great national her- 
itage, — we, the indiscriminate people of the United States, 
rci^ard your Letter, so fai' as it relates to yourself individ- 
ually, with unmingled emotions of mortilication and sor- 
row. There is no party-feeling in this, either American 
or European. If not a solitary word of American poli- 
tics had appeared in your Letter, our sentiments on this 
point would have been precisely the same ; for, w^iatever 
be our party-banner, we universally honor and esteem the 
nationality of spirit, which is alike predominant in the 
Pioneers or the Prairie, and in the more didactic page of the 
Notions of the Americans. Neither are we doctrinaires^ 
Orleanistes, foreign diplomatic agents, or aught else, which 
there may be, of transatlantic name, to rack your imagin- 
ation with terrors of persecution abroad, and slander at 
at home. None of these considerations affect our judge- 



4 

ment. But wo grieve to see this new chapter in the 
record of the infirmities of p:enius. We deplore a glori- 
ous planet darting madly from its empyrean sphere. 
We seem to be lessened in our own estimation, hum- 
bled, depressed as by an overwhelming evidence of our 
universal human weakness, in witnessing this aberration 
of the great faculty of intellect, in beholding the weak 
spots in higher and nobler mind, thus laid bare, self- 
exposed, to the profanation of vulgar gaze. Participat- 
ing in all these feelings, and your name, as an author, 
being coupled in my memory with so many reminiscences 
of pride and of pleasure, I abstain, therefore, absolutely 
and entirely, from any remark upon your exposition of the 
controversy between you and certain of the newspapers of 
New-York. 

My business, at present, is with the extraordinary poli- 
tical opinions, which, — in the professed intention of exem- 
plifying the spirit of foreign imitation, characteristic, as 
you say^ of this country, — you have introduced into 
your Letter- 
In the very heat and agony of a mighty political strug- 
gle, — the mightiest since the days of the Revolution, — 
you have gratuitously thrown yourself into the midst of 
the strife. Quitting the field of honor whereon you were 
nearly supreme, you have descended into the common 
arena of party contention, totally unfitted for the contest 
by all the habits and occupation of a life-time, to gain a 
dubious honor if successful, but under the assurance, 
nnianwhile, of almost inevitable discomfiture. As])iring 
to be more profound, logical, learned, and far-seeing 
than Clay and \\ ebster, in the comprehension of the 
great princi})les of national polity, — more critical, acute, 
and jjcnetrative in the construction of the Constitution 
than Calhoun and Liii^h, — voii deny to the Senate of 
the United States, all right to exj)ress, and by conse- 



5 



quence to entertain, any opinion upon the executive acts 
of the Cliief JMagistrate. He may, directly and nndis- 
guisedly, viohite the Constitution; but they must l)e blind, 
dumb, senseless, even in view of the prostration of their 
own constitutional powers, as a co-ordinate branch of 
Congress, and as the representations of the States of the 
Union. In your apiirehension, the Resolutions of the 
Senate are unconstitutional, and fraught with mischief; 
but in the Protest of the President, and the series of out- 
rageous measures which preceded it, there seems to be 
nothing to alarm the most timid understanding. Therein, 
you and the Nation are at issue ; and it were idle to touch 
upon the points of this question, after the masterjy and 
irrefragable constitutional arguments, with which Mr. 
Webster has Justified his vote in the Senate. At the 
same time, whilst you were coming to such a conclusion, 
with the Resolutions and Protest before you, and whilst 
you were seeking for examples of English analogies and 
English precedents obtruded into the politics of the Unit- 
ed States, it is somewhat marvellous that you should have 
overlooked the remarkable feature of the Protest itself, 
namely, the express assertion of an inherent executive 
authority in the President, prior to the Constitution, a 
sort of divine right drawn from analogy of the rojal 
prerogatives of the kings of Great Britain. You en- 
deavor, by elaborate construction, to make out a case of 
foreign imitation against the Senate : you shut your eyes 
to a case, in the self-same transaction, of monstrous 
and most dangerous foreign imitation, avowed on the part 
of the President. 

But wjy quarrel is not with these doctrines or averments 
of your Letter. AVhat 1 specially deny and impuan is 
the strange heresy it puts forth, — a misconception so pal- 
pable as not even to possess the faint lustre of mere par- 
adox, — that, in the United States, the great object of 



public suspicion and watchfulness should be the legislative, 
rather than the executive, department of the government. 

That your declared opinions, aud my remarks upon 
them, may be clearly understood, I premise a few extracts 
from your Letter. No injustice will be done to you in 
separating them from the context, because they are essen- 
tially independent observations, involving ideas extrinsic 
to your argument, and to be construed by reference to the 
general principles of political science. 

In one place you say : 

' This measure of wilhliolding the supplies is peculiarly English ; it is the means 
bywhicli Parliament has destroyed whatever of balance the government ever had, 
and is the simplest, the most obvious, and the most dangerous of all the modes of 
legislative usurpation. It is time to begin to consider our legislators in their true 
cliaracter ; not as sentinels to watch the executive merely, but as those of the 
public servants the most likely to exceed their delegated authority.' 

Again you say : — 

' If this Union ever shall be destroyed by any errors or faults of an internal 
origin, it will not be by executive, but by legislative, usurpation. The former is 
easily enough restrained, while the latter, cloaked under the appearance of legality 
and representation, is but too apt to carry the public 'sentiment with it. England 
has chantred its form of government, from that of a monarchy to that of an ex- 
ceedingly offensive aristocracy, precisely in this manner.' 

And yet again, after ascribing to the President exclu- 
sive control of the public treasure, in the offensive, and 
universally repudiated, terms of the Protest, you say : — 

' Many who read this Letter will feel disposed to exclaim against a state of 
things, which places so much power in the hands of one man. 1 see lar less ap- 
prehension of executive than of legislative usurpation, in this country. Still, I 
am willing to admit that the President has too much authority for our form of 
government.' 

Well, indeed, miglit you admit tiiis, if the high prerog- 
ative doctrines of the Protest were sanctioned by the text 
or spirit of the Constitution. But, allow me to observe, 
you mis;ii>[)iThond the great source of danger in our form 
of "overnment, not Kv-^s ihnn you do the extent oi the 
])owers of tlie President. 1 underlake to show tiiat the 
general position, which you thus deliberately and repeat- 
edly stale, is false in principle, and that it is mischievous 
ill application. 



It is quite manifest how you arrived at such an erroneous 
opinion. It was by the self-same course which you yourself 
so pointedly condemn, the unconsidered adoption of prece- 
dents from the history of Eiii^land. You perceived that, 
in very modern times, the English Parliament, or rather, 
the House of Conmions, had been the successful antaii;o- 
nist of the Crown. You remembered that, in the days of 
the Commonwealth, it had actually usurped and appropri- 
ated the w hole public authority. You knew how, during 
the two last reigns, it had practically exercised complete 
control over executive measures by means of its power to 
withhold supplies, or otherwise by its votes to embarrass 
the royal ministers. You had witnessed its late innova- 
tion upon the constitution of government, in the laws of 
parliamentary reform. Out of these and other analogous 
acts of the English Parliament, you have extracted a gen- 
eral political theory, that usurpation is to be apprehended 
from the legislative branch of government, rather than 
from the executive, that great object of patriot and repub- 
lican jealousy in all ages of the world. A moment's re- 
flection will satisfy you that this is an erroneous viev/ of 
the facts. Grant that, in England, ' Parliament has de- 
stroyed whatever of balance the government ever had,' 
and this, too, by ' legislative usurpation.' What usur- 
pation ? Why, truly, this which you thus stigmatize as 
usurpation, and hold up in terror to us, lest we should be 
over watchful of the monarchical element of our Consti- 
tution, and over trustful in the representative and popular 
element, — this usurpation it is, which gave back to Eng- 
land, by wresting it from the tyranny of the Crown, all 
that of great and free, in her institutions, which renders 
them a name of glory among the nations of Europe. Her 
statesmen boast of her limited monarchy. It is limited, 
solely by reason of the functions ac([iiired to Parliament, 
through what you designate as ' legiskiti\ c usurpation.' 



8 

But the case is applicable to our institutions only as it illus- 
trates one of the grand political aims of the age, abstracting 
power from the executive, and transferring it to the legisla- 
tive, branch of the government. It is no otherwise appli- 
cable, because, with us, the executive and the legislative 
authorities are alike public functionaries, with limited pow- 
er delegated to them by the Constitution. And which of 
these authorities, the legislative or the executive, is most 
to be apprehended by the constituent people, is not a ques- 
tion of mere English analogy, as you put it, — but a ques- 
tion of human motive and action, tested by experience and 
principle, and considered with reference to our own pecu- 
liar Constitution. 

Indcpendcnlly of the misapplied English precedents, from 
which you infer the lamb-like innocence of the executive 
as compared with the legislative authority, under our Con- 
stitution, you cursorily allude to some other considerations, 
which demand a brief notice. One is, the faculty of Con- 
gress, or either branch of it, as already touched upon, to 
refuse its assent to the annual aj)propriations. I reply, that 
the power of doing this belongs to the Senate and the 
House of Representatives severally, by positive grant of 
the Constitution ; and the exercise of a power, thus con- 
ferred, cannot be justly termed an act of usurpation. Con- 
gress, or either branch of it, has the same right to negative 
an appropriation, m liicli the President deems essential to 
the public service, as the President has to veto a bank- 
bill or a land-bill, or a bill for internal improvements, 
which Congress deems for the welfare of the Union. 
You say, that in so doing. Congress is not withholding its 
sup})lies, but our sujiplies ; and, in so doing, likewise, the 
President is not vetoing his bank or his public improve- 
ments, but our bank and our public improvements. You 
say, tiiat for a legislator to oppose granting supplies in or- 
der to ' embarrass an administration,' is a direct insult to 



the intelligence of the constituency ; and so, like^^ iso, for 
an executive maii;istrate to oppose a bank, in order to u[)- 
jiold an administration, is a direct insult to the intelligence 
of the nation. 15ut if the President, illegally, usurpinujly, 
ill {1(uogation of the Constitution, seizes upon the puhlic 
treasure, and loans it out to irresponsible political partisans 
for party-purposes merely, — it is a clear case of constitu- 
tional discretion for either the Senate or House of Rep- 
resentatives to judge, whether, in voting the sujiplics, they 
will see to the security of the revenue ; and in doing so 
they proceed upon their responsibility to the respective 
States, or to the people they represent, in the exercise of 
a function given them by the Constitution. 

Which is most liable to misuse its constitutional discre- 
tion, the President or either branch of Congress, is a very 
different question. As to this you express an opinion, that 
executive usurpation is easily restrained, while legislative 
usurpation, being cloaked under the appearance of legali- 
tv and representation, is but too apt to carry with it the 
public sentiment ; and these are the remaining reasons, 
which you assign, for your greater confidence in the ex- 
ecutive authority. 

* Appearance of legality and representation !' A\ liat 
language of a Liberal and an American, applied to the 
Congress of the United States ! How, appearance of 
representation ? Have you lent your ear to the insidious 
doctrine of incipient tyranny, broached in the Protest, 
that the President is the peculiar representative of the 
people ? Do you fori2;ct that one branch of Congress 
consists of individuals chosen directly by the people, and 
\A jio are, by name and constitution, its only immediate 
Representatives ? Of m hat citizen is the President the 
direct representative ? He is chosen by small electoral 
colleges, assembled in each State. Those electors are, in 
many instances, chosen, not by the people directly, but by 
2 



10 



the legislatures of States. In the last resort even, he is 
cliosen, not by the joeople, but by tlieir Representatives in 
Congress. It is, therefore, an implication, pregnant of 
error, to speak of the legislative authority as acting with 
appearance of representation. 

And how, appearance of leq;aliiy r Observe, that we 
are considering the relative tendencv to usurpation of the 
President and of Congress, adversely each to the other ; 
and for an act of Congress to wear the ' appearance of 
legality,' it must have the assent of the President, and of 
course, cannot be any usur])ation upon his authority. If, 
indeed, tA^o-thirds of each house of Congress should pass 
a bill, after it had been rejected by the President upon a 
constitutional c|uestion, a difficult emergency would have 
arisen. If Congress were actually exceeding its constitu- 
tional powers, and the case did not readily admit of set- 
tlement by judicial interpretation, it must, of course, be 
for the States or the people to decide between the two 
parties ; and in that event, certainlv the chances of victo- 
ry, as I shall hereafter argue, would be on the side of the 
President and the Constitution. Doubtless there is ample 
cause, under our Constitution, to be jealous of usurpation 
on the part of Congress and the President, conjointly, that 
is, the entire Government of the Union. Our assurance 
against this lies in the general integrity of the people, and 
when that fails, in the state-pride and public independence 
of the separate States. Even at the present time, but 
for the patriotism and wisdom of the Senate, representing 
the qualified sovereignty of the States, we might see the 
national liberties overborne by an usurping President, and 
by that Administration majority of the House of Represen- 
tatives, which is denounced by the President himself, as 
venal and corrupt. Usurpation by the joint power of the 
President and Congress, I repeat, is possible ; but this is 
not the ' legislative usiuj)ation' spoken of in your Letter. 



11 

Executive usurpation, you alloi;e, is easily restrained ; 
that is, under our Constitution. Is it so? Undonhtedly, 
there are legal means of repression, as aj)[)lied to executive 
magistrates, namely, tlie preferring an impeachment; and 
no such means, as applied to members of Congress. You 
express wonder, in one place, that members of Congress 
arc not proceeded against hy impeachment ; and ascribe 
this to false imitation of the English. Not so. The Pres- 
ident possesses vast independent power, greater, as you 
yourself avow, than that exercised by the King of Great- 
Britain. An individual member of Congress, what inde- 
pendent power docs he possess, — except it be to make 
speeches, and frank them to his constituents ? And either 
house of Congress, as a legislative body, possesses very 
little separate inde|>endent power. It cannot, as you be- 
lieve, so much as express an opinion, except in the form 
of, or with a direct view to, legislative action, wherein its 
own decision is of no avail \\ itliout the concurrence of the 
other house and of the President. Nor are the powers of 
Congress, in themselves, apt for abuse. Whereas it is 
inherent in the executive functions, as will hereafter be 
made to appear, that they should be peculiarly susceptible 
of abuse, and perpetually run into usurpation. 

"W hcther you build your opinions, as to the danger of 
legislative usurpation, and the innocuous quality of the ex- 
ecutive power, upon the foregoing considerations alone, is 
not distinctly stated in your Letter. But the confident 
air of conviction, wherewith you announce the doctrine, 
would imply that you have deduced it from attentive scru- 
tiny of history, or profound analysis of the principles of 
public polity. The subject, interesting in itself, invites a 
careful examination. 

In a constitutional government, like that of the United 
States, a majority of the constituent j)eople may, in some 
sense, commit usurpation; and this happens, mIh-u iliey 



12 

remodel or amend the constitutional compact, or appoint 
a cliief magistrate, by unconstitutional methods, as the 
South-American States have done in several instances. 
One of the States may impose unconstitutional conditions 
upon the sister States. Congress, or the President, sepa- 
rately or jointly, may arrogate power conferred on neither, 
but reserved to the people or to the States. Congress 
may assume to perform acts, which it belon2:s to the 
President to perform ; and the President to perform acts, 
which are the province of Congress. All these and other 
forms of usurpation are conceivable and possible. But 
for the purposes of the present investigation, it needs only 
to consider Congress and the President relatively, in re- 
spect of two forms of usurpation, namely : 

First, ^Vhether is Congress, or the President, according 
to the first principles of government and the theory of our 
Constitution, most likely to encroach one upon the other, 
in the discharge of duties actually imjDosed upon them, or 
one of them, by the Constitution; and, 

Secondly, Whether is Congress, or the President, sin- 
gly, most likely to usurp powers reserved to the people or 
the States. I say singlij, because examples of alleged 
usurpation by the joint authority of the President and 
Congress, as in tariff-laws, laws of internal improvement, 
or other alleged unconstitutional laws, do not bear upon 
the question of the relative tendency of the President 
singly, or of Congress singly, to encroach upon the people 
or the States. 

1 mnintain, as a general political theorem, that, in each 
of these two conditions, the executive authority is more 
dangerous to the public liberties than the legislative au- 
thority ; or, to speak with stricter exactness of language, 
lli;if there is more cause of apjU'chension from the Presi- 
dent, than from either or both of the two houses of Con- 
gress. And, in ilhistraiing my opinion upon this subject, 



18 

I shall, in the first placo, run quickly over a few examples 
of other free nations, and then look more particularly at 
the ease of the United States. 

Most of the valuable lessons of national })olity, appli- 
cable to the European civilization, are drawn from the 
history of the great nations of Europe, and of tlieir colo- 
nial offsets in America. It would little av ail us, in the 
])resent inquiry, to depart out of the limits thus indicated. 
AVithin these, we find the splendid Republics of Greece 
and Rome, the very ^^atch\\ord of liberty, names of 
greatness, bright "^^ ith a halo of never-dying glory. The 
Republics of modern Italy, Switzerland, and the Low 
Countries, — the less durable ones of Euijland and France, 
— the great military democracies of the middle age, out 
of \\ hich came the various kingdoms of modern Europe, 
— in all these, facts are to be discovered pertinent to our 
purpose. Nor, leaving Europe, is there any dearth of 
such facts in the young Republics of America. 

Cast your eye over the universal book of ancient histo- 
ry. Great and good men, — patriots of whom the world 
"was unworthy, everlasting memorials of the di2:nity and 
intellect of manhood, — meet the search from time to time 
in its pages. Which of them were champions of the one 
depositary of executive power ? — Unroll the old world's 
record of moral grandeur. Names of famous men shine 
upon it like stars in the galaxy of heaven. First among 
them we see party-leaders lifted into extravagant popular- 
ity and power in some fever-fit of the body politic, — gen- 
erally successful military chieftains, exhibiting that union 
of cunning and force which too often goes to make a 
conqueror, — wild meteors, glaring athwart the firmament, 
and filling the troubled world with discord and confusion, 
so as to gratify their own selfish ambition of power and 
to feed their supple syphocants with the • spoils of victory.' 
Need I specify them by individual call ? In the demo- 



14 

cratic cities of Greece, their number has given them a 
generic name, which is now passed into the by-word of 
usurpation and misrule. The tyrants of ancient Greece 
were executive chiefs, who, — despite the perpetual de- 
mocratic jealousies of the people, — despite the manv 
instances of their fatal end under the dagger of an Harmo- 
dius, an Aristogciton, even of a brother so pure as Timo- 
leon, — jet continually exemplified, by their conduct in 
office, the tendency of the temporary chiefs of republics 
to gather more and more power into their hands by grad- 
ual usurpations, until they become absolute monarchs un- 
der whatever disguise of legal forms and denominations. 
And so it is with the dictators and usurping generals of 
Rome, — Cinna, Marius, Sulla, Ccesar. All the great 
connnonwcalths of ancient times have passed away ; and 
in what did they end ? Is it not the familiar fact of 
school-boy learning that they sunk under the usurpations 
of some popular military chieftain ? That they ended in 
l)ecoming, not representative aristocracies, as your theory 
would im])lv, but simple monarchies ? And these, I admit, 
the dictators, the usurpers, the popular military chieftains, 
are they, — with lives written in blood, and signalized by 
violence and outrage, whether in camp or court, — who 
exact our attention in all the lapse of ages, because deso- 
lation, civil convulsion, the overturn of states, the break- 
ing up of popular institutions, and the rise of brilliant 
despotisms, follow along in their tremendous train. But 
are such the patriots of the past time, endeared to us, 
admired, honored, sanctified in our hourly thoughts, held 
up to our sons as models of purity and virtue, shining 
century upon centurv in the dimless lustre of their beau- 
tiful Jaiiie ? Oh no! If ye would name a name, that 
shall send the lluilliiii; blood in a tide to the heart, it is 
none of these usiuping chieftains, who, having filled the 
high places of their country a\ ith a mercenary host of 



15 

obedient followers, and possessing the sword already, by 
iisnrj)ation Joined to it the purse, and so became too 
niiiihty lor the pui)lic liberties ; it is none of these ; — hiil 
rather men, u ho bore up the banner of their country's 
honor and independence against executive usurpation, and 
perchance died by the sword or the axe in resisting it, the 
blessed martyrs of freedom. And as thus it is in the history 
of the ancient republics, so, likewise, will any, the most 
superficial observation, perceive it to be in modern Europe. 
But suppose we examine this matter under a more 
philosophical point of view. At the period when our 
authentic knowledge of Greece begins, we perceive a 
people inhabiting the southeastern extremity of Europe, 
and the neighboring region of Asia, with the interjected 
islands, speaking dialects of the same common tongue, 
having manners, religion, and historical recollections in 
common, and constituting thus far one nation, but yet 
divided into separate and independent communities, only 
casually or at least imperfectly associated for any of those 
great purposes of peace or war, which belong to the unity 
of national organization or force. These communities 
generally consisted of each of the great cities, with its 
environs, and occasionally some portion of subject terri- 
tory. Such were Sparta, Argos, Thebes, Athens. At 
first, they appear in the form of monarchies ; afterwards, 
some of them are changed in the process of domestic 
revolution into brilliant democracies. In either condition, 
they associated in general league for occasional great ob- 
jects, as in the aggressive one of the Trojan war, and the 
defensive ones of resistance to the invasion of Darius and 
Xerxes. They more frequently associated in partial 
leagues, for internal warfare among themselves, as in so 
many of the sanguinary contests between Athens and 
Sparta. They possessed, also, at times, imjierfect forms 
of permanent league, as in their Amphictyonic Council, 



16 

Look, now, into the interior organization of citlicr oi' 
the ^reat divisions of Greece, which for any length of 
time possessed a democratic form of government. Take 
Atliens, the greatest, the wisest, the brightest, of the 
Republics of Greece. Have you imagined that Athens 
was a powerful nation, having free institutions of govern- 
ment by an elected chief magistrate, a stable judiciary, 
and a representative legislature, like the United States, 
or either of its confederated States? By no means. It 
was merely a free town, whose legal citizens managed its 
affairs by a simple town government, and deliberated upon 
the enactment of laws, the levy of armies, the prosecution 
of war, the conclusion of peace, the appointment of mag- 
istrates or generals, and the punishment of political offen- 
ces, in a plain, downright, genuine town-meeting. Its 
government was a free municipal government, no more 
and no less, exercised directly by the inhabitants of the 
city in their capacity of citizens, and to which the inhab- 
itants of the subject foreign territory, and of the rural 
j)opulation without its walls, were admitted, not in the 
form of representation, but only as they might become 
entitled by acquiring what in our law is called the free- 
dom of the city. In these town-meetings, primarily, and 
for the most part, resided the deliberative voice of the 
Athenians ; in them were pronounced those admirable ora- 
tions of Demosthenes and his cotemporaries, the great 
examples of the deliberative oratory of the Greeks. 

Now what was the machinery of usurpation in Athens? 
The lo\ cr of monarchy will reply that it was democratic 
usurpation^ the extorting of power from thi' line of The- 
seus, and the giving it to the areopagus and the assemblies 
of the people. The rej)ublican will rejilv that this was 
but a restoration of pt)litical power to the citiziMis at 
large, the only legitimate claimants of jiou er. Well, 
take it upon the latter hypothesis ; for surely none other 



17 

can be upheld by an American. Wliat acl of usurpation 
begins the tale ? Is it not that of I'isistratus ? And 
how did he attain illegal power? A Creek shall tell. 

'He counterfeited so dexterously the good qualities wliicli nature had denied 
him, that he gained more credit than the real possessors of them, and stood fore- 
most in the public esteem in point of motieration and equity, in zeal for the pres- 
ent (Tovernmeut, and aversion to all that endeavored at a change. If'Uh these arts 
lie iiiiposcti ujion the people.' 

What I have thus quoted was written, let me caution 
you, nearly two thousand years ago, — not, as you might 
imagine, in the summer of one thousand eight hundred 
and thirty four. 

Moreover, the same Pisistratus paraded his wounds in the 
market-place, like a mendicant for alms, and thus contriv- 
ed ' to inflame the minds of the people, by telling than his 
enemies had laid in wait for him, and treated him in this 
manner on account of his patriotism.^ Thus Pisistratus 
made his w^y to tyranny. And then it was that the wise 
and virtuous Solon addressed himself to the citizens, 
' sometimes upbraiding them with their past indiscretion 
and cowardice, sometimes exhorting and encouraging them 
to stand up for their liberty.' Then it was that Solon 
used the remarkable expressions: ^ It icould have been 
easier for you to repress the advances of tyranny, and pre- 
vent its establishment ; but now it is established and grown 
to some height, it will be the more glorious to demolish it.'' 
And may the friends of liberty re-echo the exhortation in 
every age ! 

I3ut the Pisistratidic had their reward; and the next 
remarkable case of usurpation in Athens is that of Peri- 
cles. And how did he proceed ? Why, by banding to- 
gether a host of corrupt oflice-holders, and then using 
them to lift him to absolute power ; for, says the historian, 
' by jJcnsions and gratuities, he so inveigled the people as 
to avail himself of their interest against the council of the 
areopagus,^ that select legislative body, the only element 
of stability and conservation in the government of Athens. 

a 



18 

And is not tliis the very scene now enacting in these 
United States ? 

Look, now, cit the state of thin^.s in Italy. Wlien we 
endeav'or to call to mind the condition of any of the an- 
cient nations celebrated in history, we are prone to have 
before us the idea or image of tliat nation in its external 
relations, and in tlie general whole, as one great power 
acting in the aggregate upon the affairs of the world. 
Such, at least, is the tendency of mind, as I observe it, in 
those individuals, who have not reflected or studied upon 
the subject of Rome in reference to questions of abstract 
political ])hilosophy. On the very outside of things, we 
see conquering armies led forth to the uttermost limits of 
the civilized world ; — Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany, on 
the one side, — Carthage, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, 
Egypt, on the other, subjugated by the consuls or pr?etors 
of Home ; all mankind, as it were, coming uiidcr the do- 
minion of this proud Republic, this great centre of empire, 
sending out her lordly proconsuls to domineer over Europe, 
Asia, and Africa. Let us approach this ambitious and 
haughty power, which is commissioning Publius Sci])io or 
Caius INIarius to cross the seas, and carry the eagles of 
the Republic into Africa ; Avhich gives to Paulus ^Emilius 
authority to bind in chains ihc royal posterity of Alexander 
of Macedon, or bids C IMummius subdue the humbled 
Greeks ; which commissions Cneius Pompey or Cornelius 
Sulla to march their legions over half the prostrate thrones 
of Asia; \\irKli bestows on Caius Ciusar a aeneral mis- 
sion of victory for all Eur()[)e : — Let us a})proach it, I say, 
and see what that is, \\ hich thus revolutionizes the uni- 
verse, and by w hat means it thus propagates and renders 
universal the imperial sway of Italy. Truly it is nothing 
Init a great city, having a select deliberative assembly, 
indcH'd, but still transacting its most important business in 
u pure and genuine toA\n-meeting ; establishini:, wherever 



19 

it goes, in S])ain, Caul, Germany, simple municipalities, — 
mimic Romes, — civic institutions, not iialional ones, — 
town-governments, not great constitutional or representa- 
tive republics. 

Such, undeniably, is the fact. Our earliest kno\\ ledge 
of Italy opens to us the spectacle of another Greece, its 
political institutions being, indeed, derived from the Greeks. 
Great cities are seen here and there, the chiefs of some local 
league, or the rulers of some agricultural district, all along 
in Erturia, Latium, or Magna GrtPcia. Presently one of 
these cities engages in war with a neighboring city, and 
makes the latter tributary ; and so on from one to anoth- 
er until it has vanquished the whole peninsula. This is 
Kome. But through all this beginning career of empire, 
she still retains her municipal organization. It is the city 
and citizens of Rome, ■with a civic not a national organi- 
zation, which conquer. The same civic organization re- 
mains to the conquered. They are the subjects or allies 
of Rome as cities, not as individuals ; and the external 
affairs of Italy, the first Punic War for instance, are still the 
exclusive business of the great town-meetings of Rome. 

At length, the Italian cities tire of being equally bur- 
thened with the expenses and labors of the vast enterpris- 
es of Rome, without participating in the honors and 
enjoyments of power. What happens ? Is a representa- 
tive government like ours established ? Do the inhabit- 
ants of Capua, and Patavium, and other great towns, 
choose individuals of their number in whom they rej)ose 
trust, to meet in Rome, with individuals delegated in like 
manner by the inhabitants of Rome, and there consult for 
the common good, as Worcester, Springfield, Plymouth, 
Salem, aj)point their representatives to assemble in Boston, 
together with the representatives of Boston ? Not at all. 
Instead of this, the freedom of the city of Rome is spe- 
cially granted to particular individuals, or the inhabitants 



20 

of particular towns, so that they become citizens of, and 
voters ill, tlie city of Kome : and thus only do they par- 
ticipate in the government. In the sequel, when this par- 
tial doling out of the political privilege ceases to content 
the Italians, there grows up the Social War, which ends in 
the gradual extension of the freedom of Rome to the 
whole of Italy. This was the first great step in the 
downfall of the Republic ; and the second was when the 
foreign provincials were admitted to the same right of 
voting and acting, not by representatives, but directly, in 
the municipal assemblies of Rome. 

This municipal quality of the Greek and Roman 2:ov- 
ernments has left the traces of itself in the language of 
j)olitical science applied to a totally different condition of 
the world. AVhcnce the very word politics? It means, 
in its origin, the affairs of a city. What name is given to 
him who enjoys the elective franchise ? Simply, that of 
citizen. AVhat is the civil law, but the law of a city, and, 
by distinction, the law of that pre-eminent city, Rome ? 
A\'hat is civilization itself in its etymology, but the becom- 
ing citified, if I may so speak, an idea, which in the 
changed manners of the middle age, came to denote some- 
thing mercantile, or mechanical, and the reverse of its ori- 
ginal application. So the word metropolis, which, although 
sometimes impro})crly used to signify the capital city of a 
country, yet in strictness means the city from ^^■hiclla col- 
ony has gone out, and of a\ hicli colony it is the mother- 
city. And this fact, by the way, illustrates the great 
distinction between the modern European colonies and the 
ancient colonies of the Greeks. The old colonies were 
voluntary emigrations of the surplus inhabitants of some 
city, who went abroad to found a new city ; and the moth- 
er-city regarded the new city as a child, to be protected 
and aided if need were, but not as a subject to be held in 
obedience. 



21 

Well, now, ill the lonii iim? tli<l tl»t^ select legislative 
body of Home usurp on the people or consuls, or did the 
consuls usurp on the Senate and people ? In every chap- 
ter of Livy, of Plutarch, of Cicero, — llie fact is appar- 
ent, that it was the executive magistrates, the consuls, 
ever the consuls, who, after uniting the sword and the 
purse, humbled the Senate, and then lorded it at will over 
subject Rome. In these, the declining days of her liber- 
ty, it was by intruded foreign votes, as all testimony avers, 
that the mischief was wrought. And the grey hairs of 
age were not less prominent in this work of consular usur- 
pation tlian the greener vigor of early manhood. Age 
and long services have lately been pointed at as pledges 
of executive purity. But we read that one of these usurp- 
ing generals, — Caius Marius, — at the age of seventy, dis- 
tinguished by the unparalleled honor of seven consulships, 
and possessed of a princely fortune in money, lands, and 
slaves, died in a delirious phrensy of ambition for addi- 
tional wealth, honor, and power. Governments pass away ; 
institutions are changed ; nations rise up, move on for a 
space, and disappear, like the figures of a phantasmagoria ; 
but ill all ages man is one ; and that which was human 
nature in Home, may be human nature in America. 

Illustrations crowd upon us on every side, as we advance 
to the history of modern Europe. Prominent therein, as 
the pioneers of civilization, stand the Republics of Italy, 
closely resembling those of ancient Greece, in their civic 
organization, in their turbulent liberty, in the contest of 
classes going on within each distinct municipality, in the 
martial spirit of their inhabitants, in their mutual warfare, 
and ill their final subjugation to the tyranny of their own 
executive chiefs, simultaneously with the loss of the na- 
tional independence of the Italians. Of all that mairnifi- 
cent family of republics, all, all, yielded up their liberties 
to some usurping chief, in one form of usurpation or an- 



22 

other, excerpting tlio city of Lucca, the small village of 
San Marino, and the more potent states of Genoa and 
Venice. You may, if }()u please, take Lucca, Genoa, 
and Venice, as examples on your side of the question, of 
legislative usurpation ; inasmuch as they became, or 
continued to be, mere aristocracies. Be it so ; the differ- 
ence, then, is just here : the great mass of the Italian Re- 
publics, Florence, Milan, Amalfi, Pisa, Pavia, Verona, 
Siena, Bologna, in short, all the once free cities of Italy, 
are examples on my behalf ; while three are in appear- 
ance adverse to it ; and the force of the argument is a 
simple numerical comparison. I say , in appearance ; for, 
if Venice and Genoa do come down lo our times in 
the form of aristocracies, yet such were all the Italian 
Republics; — and how cultivated, prosperous, rich, power- 
ful, were these two to the last, preserving a proud indepen- 
dence amid the wrecks of their sister Republics I — They 
maintained their external independence, by maintaining 
their domestic independence; the impotence of their doges 
rendered them harmless ; and it was in precisely the same 
ivay, by depriving their executive chiefs of the power to do 
mischief, that Switzerland so long continued a Republic. 
There is one other great republican confederacy, which, 
by pursuing a course of domestic policy opposite to that 
of Switzerland, saw itself continually subject to the usur- 
pation of a military chief, and at length settled down into 
a mere monarchy. I allude to the United Provinces, 
ir'/zure.\\]^^ whole domestic political history is a standing illus- 
tration of my hypothesis. Were not Cornelius and John 
de Witt torn in pieces, — did not Barneveldt perish by Ju- 
dicial murder, — was not Grotius banished, — lliat some 
stadtholder might rule supreme in the Netherlands ? And 
are not the magistrates and the treasures of Amsterdam 
(\\pel!ed at last from their ancient abode, that a roitelcl may 
kin"- it in the desecrated halls of her noble Stadhuis r 



23 

lUit the groat monarchies of modern Europe all afford 
not less cogent proofs in support of my general position. 
So as not to receive this in anv degree upon \\w. mere 
trust of broad assertion, let me in treat you to reflect a 
moment, and call to memory that condition of the world, 
out of w iiich the manners, languages, and laws of the 
modern civilized nations have sprung. It was, you ^^\\\ 
remember, the state of barbarism and anarchy consequent 
in the invasion of the Roman empire by the Barbarians 
from the North. The existing governments of England, 
France, S})ain, Germany, are what remains of the feudal 
system engrai'ted by the Barbarian coiupierors upon the 
municipal and religious institutions of the Romans. A 
band of these Barbarians, be they called Goths, Saxons, 
Franks, leave their native wilds in the North, and pour 
themselves in a conquering host upon the population of 
Gaul or Britain. This invading tribe strips the con- 
quered people of their hmds, reduces the peo})le them- 
selves to servitude, and remains in possession of the coun- 
try, engrossing all the rights of government and property. 
The lands thus acquired, and the serfs upon them, are 
then parcelled out among individuals of the tribe, on con- 
dition that each individual, so receiving lands, shall per- 
form military and other duties, as an equivalent or recom- 
pense for the grant. The land thus granted is what the 
law calls a feud ; the tenure of holding it is feudal ser- 
vice. Except in regard of this engagement of military 
service, each individual of the tribe still remains indepen- 
dent of the others, and destitute of the idea or obligations 
of nationality. But the conquered people rebel ; or new 
conquests invite the conquerors to other regions ; and the 
necessity arises for concerted action. How, then, shall 
this concert be attained ? The men, of whom we are 
speaking, are a wandering tribe living in the camp, and not 
yet scattered over the country in settled habitations ; and 



24 

tliev deliberate, as they did in their native forests, as our 
Indians do, in general camp-councils. Such are the 
Chanips-de-Mars, of which we read in the early history of 
the Franks, and the assemblies of the universal German 
people, which elected Conrad and Lothaire. In process of 
time, however, these individuals of the conquering tribe 
are fixed in separate baronial castles ; each of them is the 
lord of his allotted feudal territory, the baron and liege- 
man of the feudal system, havinii: the same personal inde- 
])cndence of his fellow-barons, tliat he had when they or 
their fathers invaded the country, and the same right of 
pariicipation in councils touching the general welfare. 
As property, like power, always tends to accumulation, 
ere long we find that some of the barons, by force, or 
favor, or skill, or good fortune, acquire respectively larger 
shares of lands and feudal followers. In this stase of the 
})rogress of modern civilization, the lesser barons, those 
who have small estates, being separated far and wide over 
the country, cannot, without great expense and personal 
inconvenience, attend the public councils regularh in jxt- 
son, w hile the great barons continue able and willing to 
doii; and hereupon grows up the practice, among the 
lesser barons, of sending representatives or elected dele- 
gates to the Cortes, States, or Parliaments, there to act 
with the great barons, the ecclesiastical chiefs, and the 
king, lor the common good of the kingdom. Such has 
been the origin, all over Europe, of the deliberative as- 
semblies of modern times. 

Note well the difference between the po])ular legislative 
assemblies of ancient and modern Europe. Those of the 
old time were civic democracies, voting in person in the 
mnnicij)al corporations, to a\ liirji tlirv respectively belong- 
ed : those of the middle age w cri! military democracies, 
voting together at first when collected in jjredatory errant 
armies, and sub.se(juently resorting to representation as 



25 

matters of personal eoiiMiiience. So that popular 
representative assemblies are the j^routh of modern 
polity. 

Now Avith these considerations before us, for a key to 
the events which ensued, let us reflect where the tenden- 
cy to usurpation first developed itsell": — amoiii; the repre- 
sentative assemblies of each country, or in the person of 
the king, who, in those days, was but a baron like the 
rest, elected by them to be their leader for life. Is it not 
notorious that, all over Europe, a stupendous revolution 
was operated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
through the persevering aggressions and usurpations of the 
executive chiefs of Germany, France, Spain, England, 
Italy ? Elective magistrates converted themselves into 
hereditary dukes and princes. Crowns came to be holden. 
not by the will of the people, but by divine right in the 
line of primogeniture. In France," the legislative assem- 
blies disappear, and the kings render themselves absolute 
by destroying the authority of their great barons. In the 
Peninsula, Charles, first of that name in Spain and fifth 
in Germany, suppresses the Cortes and makes war upon 
the city-corporations of Castile, and his son Philip sets at 
nought the fueros of Aragoii. In Italy, every city falls 
under the sway of some usurjjing duke, and a Norman 
monarchy is established in Naples. In Germaiiy, the im- 
perial election comes to be a mere ceremony of state, for 
advantage of the House of Austria. In England alone a 
Parliament of Lords and Commons remains ; but even 
there our free vernacular tongue becomes corrupted into 
the pliant tool of courtly syco))hancy under the tyranny 
of the Tudors. Through all this great European revolu- 
tion, there is no diversity of aim. Every where, it is one 
unvaried picture of executive usurpation. Not a solita- 
ry legislative ])ody displays that spirit of aggression, which 
you deem to be the besetting vice of representative assem- 
4 



26 

])lies. They do not even make good their own hereditary 
independence as legislators and as men. 

Thank God, it was not always thns to be, with the dis- 
francliised, but not quite brutihed, people of Europe. 
First, the military democracies, every where but in Poland, 
had suffered themselves to slide into mere hereditary mon- 
archies. Next, those monarchs, through the capacity of 
usurpation innate in the executive head of every nation, 
however constituted and named, made themselves abso- 
lute every where but in England. But then came a new 
crisis in human affairs. Mind awoke from the torpor of 
barbarism, and began to struggle in its chains so soon as it 
became aware of their existence. The revival of letters, 
the discovery of the polar needle and of America, and the 
invention of ])rinting, changed at once the Avholc face of 
Europe. Men freed themselves first from religious op- 
pression. Was this ' usurpation ?' Afterwards, they set 
about freeing themselves from political oppression, through 
the obvious and ready instrumentality of their legislative as- 
semblies. Was this ' usuri)ation ?' It was what you desig- 
nate as such, when, — by a singular houleversement of all the 
ideas of popular right, which have come down to us from 
our forefathers, the old king-killing round-heads and Com- 
monwealth's men, — you stigmatize the glorious conten- 
tion, wherein Coke, Hampden, Vane, Pym, led, — where- 
in Sydney and Russell perished, — which is honored by the 
inunortal ^^•orks of Harrington, JMilton, Locke, and Syd- 
ney, — which Chatham, Fox, and Burke, forever glorified 
as the very Marathon and Plata3a of England's liberty, — 
when you stigmatize these the battles of national freedom 
as mere ' legislative usurpation.' The House of Com- 
mons, forsooth, have changed the government from a mon- 
archy into an oppressive aristocracy ! Prav, what was it 
when the Commons began tiieir career of ' usui])aiionr' 
Do you really prefer the government of the two Hemy 



27 

Tudors, of ]\Tary Tudor, and ol tlic male Stuarts, to that 
of the modern Georges ? Would you, that Enghuid should 
be ruled by the brutal and sanguinary Henry ? Do you 
regret the lires of Sniithficld ? Think you well of the times 
when Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were behead- 
ed at the behest of a tyrant ? \V hen the pious Fisher, the 
gallant Essex, the wise Raleigh could be judicially mur- 
dered at like command ? When the Commons ' agnized' 
the condescensions of Elizabeth on ' the knees of their 
hearts ?' AV hen King Charles went down to the House of 
Connnons in person, and at the head of a troop of horse, to 
seize upon John Hamj)den? A\ hen Sir John Elliott was 
illegally arrested and left to rot in jail wiiiiout trial, for 
exercising his privilege of speech in Parliament? — Are 
these the blessed days, which an American, in the zeal of 
his tenderness for the high prerogative of Andrew Jack- 
son, complains are done away by the ' usurpation' of the 
English Commons ? The times are indeed out of joint, 
when the President of the United States claims inherent 
executive authority by virtue of his being the successor of 
the King of Great-Britain, — and when, to justify him, on 
theoretic principles, an American would roll back the tide 
of English liberties to the reigns of the moderate and 
amiable Tudors and the liberal Stuarts. 

But let us reason coolly on this matter. — Delibtrons, 
said Sieyes,when a chamberlain of King Louis undertook 
to disperse the National Assembly with a flourish of his 
white staff. — Among the great monarchies of Europe, 
there arc two, which have distinguished themselves by 
force and boldness of intellect, by advancement in all use- 
ful arts, by the cultivation of science and learning, by the 
attainment and possession of elective assemblies of repre- 
sentation. 1 mean, of course, Great Britain and France. 
Iiepcatedly, you warn us to beware of foreign imitation. 
But I cannot understand that we should reject all knowl- 



28 

edge, uuloss we ourselves were its first discoverers. The 
object of philosopliical iiKjuiry is truth : the object of 
huniaii life is the pursuit of rational hai)piness here and 
the preparation for it hereafter. Are we to refuse to en- 
tertain a valuable fact because it was known to others 
before it was known to us? Must we forget the art of 
print ins:, or any thing else that men prize, because it came 
from the other side of the water ? Is a domestic error to 
be preferred to a foreign truth .' So far as this, clearly? 
you do not intend to ])ush your doctrine. And I agree 
with you that we are to judge of our own political system 
upon the letter of the Constitution. Nay, but for that 
you lost sight of your own principle, there would have 
been no occasion for the present communication; since it 
is by the misconstruction of a foreign precedent, that you 
are misled into error. And I introduce more specifically 
the case of France and England, in order to follow up 
your own precedent in its application to the United 
States. 

First, as to England : — which, you say, ' has changed 
its form of government, from that of a monarchy to that 
of an exceedingly oppressive aristocracy, precisely in this 
manner,' that is, by ' legislative usurpation.' ^Vhen ? 
A\ hen did she undergo or effect this change ? — AVhen did 
the government of England cease to be a monarchy ? 
Truly here is a strange assertion. — But, mean you, the 
power of the monarch is rendered null by the power of 
the aristocracy exerted in Parliament. Reduce your 
proposition, then, so modified, to any specific shape of 
time and person. Will vou ascend above the Norman 
Conrpiest.^ You imply, that the monarch has too little 
effective power now : how nuich more had he, 1 pray you, 
in the time of Saxon Hengist, llorsa, Cerdic, or Aeila ? 
Surelv these men were Germans, leading: voluntary bands 
of their countrymen to con(piest, of ^^ horn, w hat Tacitus 



29 

avers, all otlicr iiisLoriaus conliiiii : Dt ininorilms: rchus 
prinr'rpes consultant, <Ie majorihus omm:s. AVill yoii stop 
at tlic Noniiaii Conquest ? Then you uui.st Ix; content 
with that state of things, a little anieiior to the complete 
development of feudalism, oi' \\hich I have already spoken, 
w\\v\\ the suzerain had just so much authority as 
the barons of his following chose to concede, and no 
more. Or will you be content to take your stand ^ith 
Kinir John in the now race-course of the ever-to-be-re- 
membered fields of Runnymedc ? — Who could have 
dreamed that the name of INIagna Charta was yet so ut- 
terly lost to memory, that the limitation of kingly power 
in England by means of Parliament, should be men- 
tioned with implications of regret and of bad example I — 
Reflect, also, how many times that Charter was broken ; 
ho\v lon<i the kniizhts and barons had to struirirle with 
perjietually recurring executive usurj^ation ; how for a 
\\ hile, after they were broken in the War of the Roses, 
they succumbed to executive tyranny ; how the decapita- 
tion of one king was not enough to purge the Tudor and 
Stuart blood of the leprosy of usurpation ; and how no- 
thing availed for the national safety, short of the utter ex- 
pulsion of all the males of that race from Britain. 

You, however, seem to regard the epoch of the expulsion 
of the male Stuarts, — not as what it was, the period when 
the persevering usurpations of the Tudors and Stuarts 
ended w\\\\ the end of their dynasty, — not as what it 
was, the time when Parliament evened once more the 
scales of political right between itself and the Crown, — 
but as the commencement of a novel series of usurpations 
on the part of Parliament. ' Previously to that period,' 
you say in one place, ' the prerogative \^ as in the ascen- 
dant.' — Not IcgaUij ' in the ascendant ; ' for the Bill of 
Rights and the fresh memory of King Charles expiating 
his usurpations in front of AVhitehall, were in the way. 



30 

Not practicalli/ 'in the ascendant;' for the attempt of 
James of York to make it so was then losins: him his 
kingdom. — But previously.' How long previously ? At 
the battle of Naseby : — \\ hen your ' previously ' shall be, 
it is not easy to discover, unless, as before observed, it be 
during the usurping tyranny of the Tudors. — And in the 
same place you continue : — ' Since that period the pre- 
rogative has been constantly on the wane, until it is com- 
pletely annihilated as to all practical authority.' Con- 
stantly on the Avane, in good sooth I — Surely you forget 
the celebrated Resolution, introduced into the House of 
Commons by Mr Dunning in 1780, during the War of 
Independence. ' 71ic influence of tlie Crown has increas- 
ed, is increasing, and ought to he diminislied ! ' A Reso- 
lution, which even the Speaker, Sir Fletcher Norton, 
supported ; and which was adopted by a full House, al- 
lliough it was that very House, which sanctioned the Lord 
North's tyrannical policy towards insurgent America. 

lou counsel us to view the matter under a new aspect. 
Inllallam's Constitutional History, I read that — 'The 
A\ hig had a natural tendency to political improvement, 
the Tory an aversion to it. The one loved to descant on 
liberty and the rights of mankind, the other in the mis- 
chiefs of sedition and the rights of kin^s. Thou"h both 

Sac 

admitted a common principle, the maintenance of the 
constitution, yet this made the privileges of the subject, 
that the crown's prerogative, his peculiar care.' And I 
read in Bissett, that — ' The tyrannical proceedings of 
Charles formed the opponents of his pretensions into a 
fnin, well-compacted, and powerful body. By pronuil- 
gating the doctrines oj passive obedience, so contrar} to 
the rights and liberties of Englishmen, to common sense, 
and to common feeling, the King * * * united the sup- 
porters of opposite sentiments under the apj)elIation of 
Whigs.' And in Rapin'^s Dissertation on ^Vhigs and 



\ 



31 

Tories, I find tlic distinction of principle^, betweon llic 
Tory as tlu' ])artisan ol" the executive authority, and tlie 
Wlii!2; as the asserter ol" the riglits ol" the j)eople, — deduc- 
ed throuiih all the changes of Saxon and Norman Britain. 
But tliis venerahle name of W iiiir, associated witli so 
many of the triumphs of libertN, — which well ser\cd as 
a partv-designation for those who drove James Stuart 
to the Continent, — which well served to distinguish 
our fathers in our own glorious Revolution, — this re- 
miniscence of liberty is out of vogue, it seems, in 
your vocabulary. "Wherefore, thrice you caution us 
ajrainst readin" Burke ; our legislators must not look into 
any Whig speeches or books ; the star-chamber records 
of roval prerogative are ^ery j)rofitable reading for the 
writers of presidential protests ; but let all beware of such 
dangerous matter as 'Chatham, Burke, and the parliamen- 
tary history of England.' Most of us had fondly imagined 
that Parliament, in standing by its ancient privileges against 
the usurpations of the Crown, was doing some little thing 
for freedom ; but you tell us, not so ; they were only 
building up an ' oppressive aristocracy,' at the expense of 
the good Henry and the gentle James. 

Now here again I take issue upon the matter of fact. 
At this present writing, I ayer, the universal people of 
England possess more power as such than at any prior 
period since the Norman Conquest, except, perhaps, for a 
very brief time of the Commonwealth. I deny that w hat 
the Commons have been doing for the last two hundred 
years is 'usurpation.' With your leave, I hold to the 
Jl hig faith herein, as briefly stated in Parliament by Mr 
Curran: — 

' The existence of British Uberty is due to tlie unremitting vigilance willi which 
it has been guarded from encroachment. Every invasion, with which it was 
threatened Inj the folly of minisltrs or tlie usurpation of hiti;i,^s, has been constant- 
ly checked by a constitutional assertion of liberty. • Such was Magna Charta ; 
such were various statutes that were made under the House of Lancaster ; such 



32 

tlie Petition of Rights, the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and the recent 
repeal of the vi George I. No man can think tliat British liberty derived any 
authority from those statutes, or that acts of Parliament can create constituent 
rio-hls. We are not free because Magna Charta was enacted, but Magna Charta 
was enacted because we were free.' 

And tliough it were ' usurpation,' and if absolute mon- 
arcliv were a thinii so much to be longed for and mourned 
after, vet I deny that what the Commons have acconi- 
plislied is merely the strengthening of the aristocracy at 
the expense of the monarchy. — In the first place, the 
feudal system was in itself a pure aristocracy, just as 
much so as the government of V^enice. — Next, the grant- 
ing of supplies, or the refusing them, is coeval with the 
existence of Parliament. Kings would have been very 
glad to dispense with parliaments, if it might be ; but 
they summoned their liegemen to meet for the express 
l)urpose of obtaining gifts, aids, benevolences, and other 
voluntary grants of money. The Commons have acquir- 
ed no 7UIV powers, in our time, or in any time, by refusing 
supplies. Legally, it is now, and always was, an open 
bariiain between the King and Parliament. Govern to 
our satisfaction, and we will give you supplies in aid of 
your hereditary revenues, — ever has been the true consti- 
tutional language of the Commons. — In the third place, 
as to the composition of the House of Commons, and the 
intervention of the titled aristocracy in returning its mem- 
bers, it was conclusively shown, in the debates on the Re- 
form-Bill, that the bill gave to the House a broader con- 
stituency than it ever before possessed.— Finally, touching 
the faculty possessed by the majority of the House of 
Commons, of virtually controlling the executive chief by 
controlling his ministers, I liefer even such government 
so administered, if we must choose in this alternative, 
to the rule of an absolute and irresponsible monarch. 
Can you seriously intend, as your language implies, to 
express a preference for the latter condition? On riper 
rellcctioii, }ou cannot but admit, for it seems to be one of 



33 

the Iriiisnis of public rrrcdom, thai a very straighll) li'.nit- 
cd uionarchN, liUi; that of Enj^laiid, is hettur than the 
absohitisin of Spain or ol the East. 

Then, as to Erancc : I fnmkly avow that tlic oii^ani/a- 
tion of the National Assembly was in form a ' legislative 
usurpation.' But how stood the fact upon the act ol 
usur})ation ? Was it not the rather a justifiable reclania- 
lion of rights usurped from the nation by successive kings ? 
From the time of the expulsion of the English out of 
France, amid occasional vicissitudes in favor cither of the 
barons or the tiers-ctat, the kings had been, for centuries, 
committing usurpation after usurpation, until despotism 
had, as it were, come to be legalized. The Estates had 
been summoned but casually, and were disused since the 
reign of Louis XIII. The nobles were converted into 
mere courtiers. No land-mark of liberty remained stand- 
ing, but the great religious and judicial corporations. Out 
of tiiat whole series of events, from the assembling of the 
States-General to the opening of the National Conven- 
tion, little is to be extracted of argument on either side of 
our (juestion, because it was from iirst to last the march of 
a strong revolutionary im[)ulse, a great democratic move- 
ment, rendered sanguinary and capricious by foreign inva- 
sion and an internal war of classes. Under the Conven- 
tion, there was no executive head. As our Congress did 
in the Revolution, so did the Convention ; they got along 
very well by means of legislative committees ; at least 
there was no want of energy in those executive conuuit- 
tees, and quite enough of the spirit of usurpation. But so 
soon as there was an executive head, eo nomine, what do 
we see ? The Directory purifies the Councils by surround- 
iiiii tlic Tuilcries with troops. — Then Bonaparte enters 
upon the scene; and surely the First Consul, taken from the 
camp to preside over the republic, is not over-scrupidous to 
observe the constitutional bounds of authority. The Em- 



34 

peror indulges executive usurpation and lust of conquest 
to that degree, which wearies France and Europe of his 
rule. — The Bourbons return ; but they also must needs 
infringe the Charter; and the Revolution of the Three 
Days ensues. At last, we have Louis Piiilippe ; and if 
common fame speaks truth in this behalf, you will not 
charge him with reluctance to magnify his apostleship, 
whether at the expense of the people or the Chambers. 

It may be, that I needlessly labor this point of histori- 
cal proof. But it is one of the traits of the times, that 
every gentleman, who, like you, attempts to defend the 
President, is overcome with ecstatic admiration of the ex- 
ecutive branch of government, and insensibly glides into 
the style of absolutism, and the consequent depreciation 
of legislative assemblies. Wherefore, it becomes need- 
ful to revive the very essential doctrine of liberty, — the 
fundamental piinciple of democracy in all ages, — namely, 
distrust and jealousy of executive usurpation. 

As to this branch of the subject, the truth is a general 
one, common to all times and places. Depose a given 
quantity of power in the hands of one individual, and he 
is more capable and more apt to abuse it, to seek to mag- 
nify it, than a legislative assembly invested with the same 
quantity of power. The quality of oneness gives to him 
immense advantages in such an enterprise ; as persever- 
ance of aim, secrecy, undivided counsels, energy. — Then, 
popularity attaches to an individual, to the lustre of per- 
sonal glory, as all experience demonstrates, rather than 
to an aggregation of individuals. That shall be deemed 
virtue and moderation in a cunning individual, which 
passes for rank treason in a Legislative assembly. But 
the ariiument is a trite one ; it would irk me to follow it 
up ; and I ic^ave it for the })urpose of elucidating the ])ar- 
ticular lacilitics of usur|)ation possessed by the President, 
as compared with the Houses of Congress. 



35 

111 tlic iiorrrnmcnt of tlic Uniied States, I hold there 
are two qiiarlcis, iVoiii w hich iisiirpalioii, — el'licient, (l;in- 
G;croiis attack on the Constitution, — is more especially to be 
dreaded. Whether, as between the i;overnors and the 
governed, there is most reason to be jealous of the States 
or of the Union, is not the present question. But, look- 
ing to the government merely, there is to be watched, 
first, the aggregate power of President and Congress in 
the shape of complete legislation ; and that is the old con- 
troversy, agitated in the very outset, on the adoption of the 
Constitution. There is, next, the President, whether he 
come upon us in the guise of a popular soldier, or of an acci- 
dental chief of party, or, still worse, as combining these 
two perilous conditions. Setting aside the consideration 
of risk to the States or people from a conspiracy of usur- 
pation in the President, the Congress, and the Judiciary, — 
there is, in my view, more cause to apprehend effec- 
tive usurpation from the President separately, than Irom 
the Judiciary, the Senate, or the House of Representa- 
tives. Prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution, 
it would appear, such was the universal opinion touching 
this point. The opinion was afterwards called in ques- 
tion, however, by some eminent men of the time, who, 
while they admitted that in other societies the execu- 
tive department was justly regarded as the source of dan- 
ger, yet contended that here it was too powerless to be 
apprehended in comparison with the legislative depart- 
ment. But they confessed the dangerousness of the exec- 
utive power, even here, if ' in the hands of a particular 
favorite of the people.' Then, it was a speculative in- 
quiry : now , we are able to speak to the question from 
experience. And this being a vital question in our Con- 
stitution, let us analvze it, and examine its elementary 
parts. 

We may very shortly dismiss the Judiciary ; which can 



36 

usurp only upon paper ; and tliat usurpation, unless aided, 
and still better if opposed, by the President and Congress, 
is AAJiolly incapable of operating in fact to the immediate 
detriment of the people or the States. Its judgements, 
except they be enforced ])y the President, are only preju- 
dicial as opinions. .ludges themselves are impeach- 
able, as well as the President : and they may be deprived 
of their political being by the repeal of the act of Con- 
gress under which they are appointed. Add to which, 
that judicial bodies are in the habit of deferring to pre- 
cedent ; and if prone to amplify their jurisdiction in mat- 
ters of law, yet have not means or aptness for indepen- 
dent j?o/i7/<:a/ usurpation. So that, all things considered, 
they cannot be greatly in the way, when acting adversely 
to the President and to Congress. 

Conjointly, the Senate and House of Representatives 
have means of direct control over the President, — first, 
by impeachment, — secondly, by refusing appropriations, — 
thirdly, by a concurrent vote of two thirds after a veto. 
Separately, the House of Representatives has no inde- 
pendent means of control, except in the refusal of appro- 
priations. The Senate has independent means of control 
in the same \^ay, and also in its action upon treaties and 
appointments. Neither the House nor the Senate has 
any considerable patronage. What jurisdiction either has 
of contemj)ts is (juite unsettled. Their only substantive 
power, acting directly from them ujjou the people, is in 
the opinions they express ; and the President possesses 
the same jjower in this respect, with any member, or 
either House of Congress, even to the origination of leg- 
islative acts. \( the people arc, at any time, with Con- 
gress, against the President, it must be on the force of 
reason, or at least opinion, exclusively ; it cannot be through 
any corrupt inlhiences, or in \ irtuc of actual power. So 
nuich for Congress. 



37 

Tli(! President lias co-ordinato powers witli either House 
of Congress in the oriiiination or th(^ rejection ol a hiw. 
To counterbahmce their power in thv. matter of inii)eaeli- 
ments and of a vote by two thirds upon a Aeto. tlic Pres- 
ident has the faculty of acting upon the cupidil \ ol indi- 
vidual members through tlie appointing power, and enor- 
mous means of acting upon the whole people through 
appointments to and removals from office, and as com- 
mander of the army and navy. If he be wicked enough 
to render himself the party-head of a vast mercenary 
band of subservient oflice-holders, — and to devote the 
l)ul)lic revenues to the business of corrupting individuals 
directly with official bribes, and corrupting the public 
mind generally through an organization of presses main- 
tained also by perquisites and official bribes, — then, as he 
has incalculably greater means of mischief m this respect 
than either House of Congress, if he also l)e possessed 
of the tem])er of usurpation, the case will have arrived 
for all men, who desire not a master, to strike in to the 
rescue of the Constitution. 

Has, then, such an emergency arrived ? What is the 
evidence of fact upon the relative tendency and capacity 
of the President, and of the two Houses of Congress, to 
usurpation ? — To this inipiiry will be devoted the remain- 
ing pages of this Letter. 

No instance occurs to my recollection, of any actual 
encroachment, by the House of Representatives or the 
Senate, upon the constitutional rights of the President, 
except it be the disputed votes of the present Senate. 
Various examples are at hand of legislative acts, that is, 
conjoint acts of President and Congress, alleged by some 
party or persons to be unconstitutional. Such are the 
several bank-acts, acts of internal improvement, tlui alien 
and sedition laws, embargo-acts, the purchase of Louis- 
iana, certain tariff-laws, and so forth, — some, among the 



38 



most odious of these, ori^inatins: with the executive de- 
j)artmciit of the time, and all having its constitutional 
sanction. These, of course, go for nothing in the argu- 
ment. Nor will I discuss imputed unconstitutional acts, 
inchoate or complete, of past administrations. Suflicient, 
is the lesson taught us by the present Chief jMagistrate. 

Executive usurpation generally begins, and often con- 
sists altogether, in the abuse or unlawful extension of 
constitutional powers. It loves to observe the forms of 
law. In elective States, it is uniformly accompanied \\ itli 
false professions, wherewith to deceive the electors. Its 
favorite mode of operation is by exciting a groundless 
alarm in respect of some other person or institution, so as 
to divert public attention from itself, and cloak its own 
selfish purposes. When there is a strong military force 
on foot. Its agent of aggression is the army ; but when 
that is not at hand, its engine of power is either faction 
or pecuniary corruption. 

When Andrew Jackson came into office, it was uj)on 
certain professed principles of the conduct he intended to 
pursue, that his election was put and carried. His oppo- 
nents objected his violent character ; \\\s self-avowed inca- 
pacity for civil employment ; the disregard of law, which 
had occasionallv marked his public career. 1 hey predicted 
misrule and usurpation, as inevitable to ensue upon his 
attaining power. His advocates, and he himself person- 
ally in one form or another, pledged him to the following 
principles, namely : 

1. His retirement at the close of one term of service. 

2. His su})eriority to mere party-considerations. 

3. Sedulously to avoid conferring office on members of 
Congress. 

4. To keep elections free from all contact with, or in- 
fluence from, executive j)atronage. 

5. Economy of administration. 



39 

G. Tlic rcrorni ol' [)ul)lic abuses in persons and tilings. 

7. All administration specially regardlul of the interests 
of the people. 

8. Scrupulous delicacy in the exercise of public au- 
thority derived from the Constitution. 

Such were the fahe pretences, employed in the Presi- 
dent's favor; lor never, in all the annals of time, was a 
more extraordinary case of flagrant contrariety between 
practise in office and profession out of it, than the Admin- 
istration exhibits. Not one substantial pledge of his party 
or his friends has the President redeemed. Nay, the 
monstrous violation of each seems to be in very scorn of 
truth and honor. But, passing over this point, w hat 1 
propose to illustrate is, the aim of his open forfeiture of 
all the pledges in question, and of his persevering march in 
a line of conduct the reverse of his engagements, — name- 
ly, to raise up a dynasty of corruption, by perverting and 
prostituting all the powers of government to that one 
abominable end. This is my charge against the Presi- 
dent : herein I signalize the usurping and unconstitutional 
spirit of the Administration. — Inspecting each of the great 
classes of action, whereupon he was pledged, we shall 
perceive that the executive functions have in general been 
stretched to their uttermost tension for the augmentation 
of executive power ; and that where, in some noted 
cases, abstinence in this respect has appeared, it was not 
through moderation of principle, but in order to weaken 
Congress. 

Let me briefly call your attention to the details of this 
undeniable and pregnant fact. 

1. The President's friends promised that he would 
serve but one term ; and he himself, in his first message 
to Congress, advised the amendment of the Constitution 
in this particular, to prevent the abuse of a second elec- 
tion ; while not only is he a second time in office, but it 



40 

is by no means clear he will not be held up lor a third 
term. And when .Mr. BIcDiifiie, pursuant to the Presi- 
dent's recommendation, actually moved an amendment of 
the Constitution to limit the tenure of presidential service, 
he was denounced as an enemy of the President, it thus 
ajjpearing that what the President had been made to say 
in his messai?-e was nothinir but deceitful profession, the 
stale demagogue's art of usurpation in all republics. 

2. He urged President Monroe to break down ' the 
monster, party,' and to be catholic in his appointments; 
yet he it was that adopted a system of proscription for 
opinion's sake, removing from ofticc two thousand persons 
in four years, only because they were not partisans, and 
appointing mere partisans with such reckless disregard of 
personal fitness, that some nominations were unanimoushj 
rejected by the Senate ; descending ' down to low-water 
mark to make an ousting of tide-waiters,' if they did not 
happen to be clamorous for Andrew Jackson. Nay, the 
\\vj\\ oflices of this Republic were shamelessly claimed as 
the ' spoils' of party victory ! 

3. Before he came into office, the President formally 
reprobated the appointment of members of Congress to 
office ; averred that to do so would make corniption ' the 
order of the day ' ; and solemnly declared that it was ' due 
to himself to practise what he recommended to others.'' Yet 
this, which John (^uincy Adams and his predecessors did 
rarely, Andrew Jackson has done frequently. Corruption 
has become the order of the day ; and that in examples of 
baseness, of themselves enough to sink in the deep sea 
any Administration not sustained by unconstitutional and 
fraudulent means. 

4. In his inaugural address the President reiterated the 
assurances of his partisans, not to l)ring ' the patronage of 
the L^oviMiunent into conllict with the freedom of elec- 
tions.' Vet it is the daily spectacle of this Administration 



41 

lliiit tlu' rcvoiiuc oOicors earn ihcir \\ aj^i's in (.■Icctionccr- 
ins; lor ihc President ; that ]>arty newspapers are estab- 
lislied or sustained by contributions of tlieir i)ay ; that not 
a few of the higher officers of government arc specially 
meddlesome even in state-elections ; that post-office con- 
tracts are made a matter of corrupt partisan emolument ; 
that the surest qualification for office is noisy partisan- 
ship ; and that all the energy of jilacn and patronage, al- 
most the entire revenues of the govcrnnient, are squander- 
ed in corrupting the press and the citizens for the special 
benefit of the President and the Vice-President. 

5. Economy of administration. — There was no one 
thing in the administration of .John Quincy Adams, about 
which his opponents complained so clamorously, as its al- 
leged profusion. — Who could have thought it possible ? — 
In their long roll of pretended abuses, not a clerkship have 
they abolished, not a salary reduced. Their loud talk of 
retrenchment was the trickery of imposition. Those 
very men have augmented the public expenditures by mill- 
ions annually ; money has been poured out like water in 
extra-allowances to partisan contractors, and extravagant 
jobs to newspaper-editors, in multiplied offices and aug- 
mented salaries ; in every form of lavish prodigality. 

6. The party composing this Administration raised an 
outcry against abuses, which did not exist ; and so soon 
as they came into power, with unparalleled eflrontery ac- 
tually proceeded to create those very abuses. What they 
meant by ' reform,' no man knew ; for they did not desig- 
nate the abuses to be reformed ; but they defined the 
tiling practically to be the turning out of office fiiithful and 
intelligent incumbents, and ])utting in political partisans. 
How truly they have themselves shunned abuses in office, 
the w orld may sec by that sickening mass of rottenness 
and fraud, the bankrupt Post Office Department. 

7. Protecting the interests of tlie people. — This appears 



42 

to imply, vetoing public improvements, denouncing the 
Bank, raising interest to eighteen cents in the dollar, par- 
alyzing industry in all its branches except note-shaving, 
taking measures to reduce to insolvency every man whose 
capital consists in his integrity and enterprize only, aiding 
to put down manufactures, and the like notable meihods 
of ruinini:: tlie middling interest, and spreading dismay 
among the business-men throuiihout the Union. 

8. But the grand charm A\as the word ' democracy.' 
The Administration was to be purely ' democratic' in prin- 
cij)le, scrupulously abstinent in the exercise of power, the 
special and incorruptible guardian of the Constitution. 
Pending his first term of service, the conduct of the Pres- 
ident on this head was ambiguous, not to say capricious, 
in appearance. Occasionally, he seemed to give up the 
clearest rights of the government, to deny the plainest 
powers of the Constitution ; as in some of his ofticial 
messages. Then again he was exerting the executive au- 
thority in forms never practised by his predecessors, never 
contemplated by the Constitution. Time has presented 
us with a solution of the seeming inconsistency or uncer- 
tainty. The ' democracy,' which he contemplated, was 
not a republican government, administered in a democrat- 
ic spirit ; but a submissive people ruled at the will of a 
dictator. First, this Administration is decidedly more 
federal than either of its predecessors ; that is, the Pres- 
ident habitually exercises, and in the Proclamation or 
Protest elaborately claims, higher federal powers, pow- 
ers more purely constructive and more glaringly anti- 
democratic, than any antecedent Chief jNIagistrate. Next 
while the President, and his immediate organs, denied 
\arious constitutional powers of the Judiciary and 
of Congress, none are denied to the President. And 
this proves to be the key of the seeminii ea|)rice in the 
coMSlruction of the Constitution, of occasional rigor alter- 



43 

natinir with extreme laxitv, whicli had characterized the 
first four years of tlie Administration : — to abstract pow- 
er from the judicial and legislative departments of govern- 
ment, to arrogate power to the executive department. 

First, the President avowed that he held himself above 
the law of the land, undertaking to observe the laws, not 
as construed bv the constitutional judges of their mean- 
ing, but as construed by himself: thereby aiming a 
deadlv blow at the Judiciarv, which indeed the oflicial 
presses denounced and proscribed by name in echo of the 
President. 

Next, in one message or another, the President has 
expressly denied to Congress the right to make appropri- 
ations for internal improvements and to incorporate a 
national bank, and impliedly disputed the constitutionality 
of the protecting system ; while the same official presses 
talked about 'cutting down' the Senate, and justified the 
shootins: at members of the House for words uttered in 
debate. 

But, on the other hand, while the President and his par- 
tisans were thus lopping off the functions, and insulting 
the dignity, of Congress and of the Judiciary, they were 
silently heaping up power in the hands of the President. 

He began by that wholesale exercise of the power of 
removal, before alluded to; a power not set down in the 
Constitution ; raised only by implication ; introduced in- 
to practice at first for cause of extreme necessity, and that 
by so doubtful a construction as to be decided by the casting 
vote of the Vice-President ; rarely used by Washington 
and Jeflerson ; disused as it were for thirty years ; but 
immediately seized for daily use in the settled party-sys- 
tem of this Administration. Next, he took upon iiim the 
frequent exercise of the odious power of the veto, also 
intended by the founders of the Constitution for extreme 
cases only, but employed by Andrew Jackson in four years 



44 r : 

moro times than by all his predecessors tosjether since the 
foruiaiion of the Union. And, in conformity with the 
spirit of these acts, he gave Congress to understand that it 
might exercise the powers which he absolutely denied to 
it, if it would exercise them, or leave them to be exercis- 
ed, in the way and time he prescribed. Thus, after ap- 
proving a harbor-bill and making it the law of the land, 
he assumed to abrogate parts of it at his discretion. Thus, 
also, Congress might not incorporate a bank subject to the 
joint authority of the President and of Congress ; but, 
icaiting his time, it might incorporate a bank to be the 
treasury agent, (or in other words, the private party-hack,) 
of the President. 

Down to this epoch, — the close of the first term, — the 
President himself did not induli!;e in those offensive pre- 
tensions and phrases of dictatorship, which have recently 
come into fashion with the Administration. The Globe, 
to b(; sure, told us that Andrew Jackson was ' born 
to conniiand.' But things were not yet ripe for the final 
step. Usurpation proceeds gradually. Usurpers may 
sometimes conceive indistinct ideas, entertain vague 
hopes, as to the future ; but generally it is one stage 
of elevation, which lifts them high enough to take 
observation of another. Bonaparte resolved to be the 
greatest of generals, and he became so ; but the re- 
solution to be Consul was an after-thought, and the 
resolution to be Emperor still a second after-thought. 
Cromwell scarce looked to be Protector, when he led a 
troop against King Charles. — The object contemplated, I 
re[)eat, and the object accom[)lished, in the first four years 
ol this Administration, was to establish a dynasty of cor- 
ruption by perverting and prostituting all the powers of 
government to that end. By means then pcMccivcd and 
understood, although not then distinctly exposed or cir- 
cunistantialiy proved, a portion of the ne^^spaper press 



46 

was tliorouahlv l)ril)r(l, and corniptcd into the mere sti- 
pendiary of the Achninistration. All men in the j)uhlie 
service, from the lieads of de[)artment down to the hum- 
blest clerks and revenue-oflicers, were made to comj)re- 
hend that their tenure of office consisted, not in ability 
and integrity, but in blind subservience to the will of their 
chief in all things, even to the matter of the company to 
be kept by their wives ; not in oflieial faithfulness, but in 
shouting hosannas to Andrew Jackson. Then, by the 
agency of venal presses, and the all-pervading intrigues 
of contractors and office-holders, the re-election of the 
President was secured, and the present diflieulties entailed 
on the Republic. The fabric of corruption was reared. 
Its machinery of imposition and calunmy was in full i)l;iy. 
The fetters of the dynasty were twisted about our limbs. 
And all the energies of this nation, — 

O glorious strengtli 
Put to the labor of a beast, debased 
Lower than bond-slave ! — 

were harnessed for the despicable work of the faction 
about the President. 

Notwithstanding the just perception of the usurping 
spirit of the Administration, entertained by all enlightened 
men not bound to its cause by party-trammels, there oc- 
curred a series of events in the autumn of his re-election, 
and tiie winter ensuing, which for a season diverted the 
public watchfulness into another channel. I refer to the 
progress of nullification in South-Carolina. In the case 
of Georgia, the President had expressly given his sanc- 
tion to practical nullification in the worst form. No man 
suspected him of any intention to deal thus kindly with 
the Nullifiers of South-Carolina ; because the circum- 
stances of his personal difference with John C. Calhoun, 
and the unfortunate connexion of that eminent individual 
with the mi]Iilication-])arty of his State, were matter of 
universal notoriety, ^\e at the North, especially, felt 



46 

alarm for the safety of the Union. We feared some act 
of prc(i])itatc violence on the part of the President. His 
extraordinary veto-message had eradicated all faith in the 
general soundness of his views of the Constitution. Wiien, 
therefore, his Proclamation unexpectedly appeared, it filled 
us with joyful and most welcome surprise. Allhouuh it 
was rather ultra-federal in some points, we \v\ jiailed 
it with sincere approbation ; because we cherished the 
Constitution above all things ; and cheerfully sacrificed 
our party-predilections on the altar of the Union. In the 
stormy session of Congress, thereon following, the great 
statesman of Massachusetts, actuated by such sentiments, 
gave to the Administration his all-powerful aid. That 
controversy, then, was ended ; honorably, to be sure, to 
the President, thanks to the timeous interposition of 
Daniel Webster at one period, and that of Henry Clay 
and John C. Calhoun at another ; but it was ended, and 
so ended, that Opposition seemed to slumber. In reality, 
the people were prosperous and content. A load of care, 
uncertainty, and apprehension, was taken off their shoul- 
ders by the simultaneous settlement of th(^ nullification 
and tariff (juestions. Then was the time lor the Presi- 
dent to earn himself immortal opinions. If he had pos- 
sessed magnanimity enough to frown into nothingness the 
' venal herd of flatterers ' about him, — had he taken 
counsel the rather of his known responsible advisers, — 
could he, like Sulla, after attaining the summit of ambition 
at the expense of honor and his countrv, have shown 
himself superior even to his fortunes, — if, emerging from 
the murky atmosphere of faction which he had groped in 
so long, he were great enough to have made himself tlic 
head of the nation instead of the mere leader of a })arty 
held toirether bviu)thiiii' but monev, — if Andrew Jackson 
had be(;n capable to do this, men Mould have thrown the 
mantle of charity over the manifold sins of his first ad- 



47 

ministration ; and, savo amoni; (lisa|)|)()inlc(l olVici'lioldt'is 
jio loni!;(3r able to use liim lor tlicir iMnolunicnt, not a voice 
would have spoken but to honor him in every city and 
every hamlet of America. The path of true glory Avas 
plain before^ him as the light of noonday. His visit al the 
North made manifest the readiness of all the world to be 
silent if they couhl not applaud, and to acquiesce in his 
authority ; — they little dreaming that the prime use he 
meditated to make of his unexampled ])opularity was 
wantonly to strike a death-stab at the welfare of the na- 
tion and the integrity of the Constitution. 

So early as during the first year of his being in office, 
the President called the attention of Congress to the 
subject of a re-charter of the National Bank. He re- 
peated the call in subsc(|ucnt years. No scruples had 
then entered his mind as to the constitutionality of a bank- 
act. We heard nothing of its being a gigantic moneyed 
corporation, dangerous to the liberties of the people. 
Some three years afterwards. Congress accordingly passed 
a bill for a re-charter of the Bank. But the President 
negatived the bill on various grounds of special excep- 
tion to its provisions, and among the rest because that, 
which he had recommended to be done two or three years 
ago, was now, as he said, premature. At the same time, the 
presses of the Administration began to raise an outcry 
against the Bank, upon grounds incredibly factious or con- 
temptibly futile ; and the party took up the matter in 
Congress the next winter. Wherefore this remarkable 
change in the views of the President ? The answer to 
this inf|uiry brings us to the next step in the career of 
executive usurpation. 

The Administration had succeeded, past all belief, be- 
yond even their own hopes, in the plan of rendering the 
office-holders of the country inslrumenlsof electioneering, 
and of identifying a part of the newspaper-press with 



48 

the government tlnoni^li post-office largesses. The rev- 
eiHies of tlic nation were achninisttrod, not for the good 
of the people, but the interest of a party ; and the re-elec- 
tion had, as the managers thouiiht, fastened the country 
to the dynasty of Jackson. l>ut ihcy \\ ishcd to clench 
the nail. Tliey kncAV that tlic business of this people 
was conducted in no small degree by means of bank- 
credits. Their own venality, — the facility with which 
they had made corruption the order of the day in iheir 
own ranks, — led them to conclude they might render it 
tmiversal, if they could but obtain the same absolute con- 
trol of the Bank of the United States, which they al- 
ready possessed of the Treasury Department and the 
Post Office. Working such wonders with the annual 
revenue of the government and the mail-contracts and 
offices, what might they not do if they could turn the 
A\ hole business of borrowing and lending into the same 
feculent kennel ! There was too much of promise in this 
hopeful scheme to be neglected. For reasons obvious 
cnouiih, the Branch in New-Hampshire was first at- 
tempted ; but they found, to their mortification, that 
althou2.li the Senator from New-Ham])shire might be a 
very fit person to trallic. in government bribes, it was a 
thing wholly out of Jeremiah Mason's line of practice. 
IJoth were citizens of Ne^y-Hampshire, to be sure; 
bill they did not breathe the same stratum of atmos- 
phere, ])hysically, morally, or intellectually. The Pres- 
ident of the New-Tlampshire Branch could honor the 
Senat(5 or the ]5ar ; but he could not administer the 
Bank in tin; exclusive interests of tlie dijnastij of cor- 
ruption. Nicholas Biddlc and his associates of the IMoth- 
cr Bank were alike impracticable. Thereupon came 
war against the Bank. Had the Hank been ciiiiallv sub- 
servient w ilh tlu^ I'o.st Oflic(>, although, like the latttM", 
it should have coined its life-blood into bribes, becoming 



49 

utterly bankrupt and a standing beacon of mismanage- 
ment and foul fraud, yet would the sympathetic presses 
and the tender-hearted orators of the Administration have 
been filled with sensibility for its amiable weaknesses and 
the loveliness of its unbhMiiished purity of intention. But 
it was incorruptible, and therefore unfit to live, — under 
the government of Andrew Jackson. 

Men, who are at once great and good, administer pub- 
lic affairs in the honor and welfare, not of themselves, 
but of the nation over which they preside. It has been 
a feature of the sycophantic man-worship, which charac- 
terizes the party in power, to apply all the acts and events 
and resources of the Administration to the uses of elec- 
tioneering and the personal glorification of Andrew Jack- 
son. In the mistimed, and generally misplaced, gascon- 
ades, which have accompanied the announcement of any 
treaty concluded, we see this pointedly exemplified. 
Reckless of principle, the minions of the Administration 
were equally ready to clamor for or against a man or an 
institution, whichever should best aid them in the work 
of securing the perpetual control of the Union. Accord- 
ingly, as they could not use the Bank for electioneering 
purposes, they betook themselves to abuse it for such pur- 
poses. And their game, in this matter, was another of 
the secrets of usurpation, which historical experience 
teaches and exposes. 

Under all governments, the various corporate associa- 
tions of the people are always elements of popular 
strength and popular power, except when they are cor- 
ruptly or surreptitiously attached to the machine of gov- 
ernment. If independent of the government, and amen- 
able oidy to the laws of the land, they are the points 
(V appui of the people in resisting the usurpations of their 
rulers. In despotic monarchies, having no true legislative 
bodies, like Russia, T(ukey, some of the governments of 
7 



60 

the East, they are the onlij civil resource against oppres- 
sion, which tl.e nation possesses. They were so in 
France previous to the Revolution. These are notorious 
political facts. ^Vhere^ore, in all ages, one of the iireat 
objects of despots, or would-be despots, is first to corrupt, 
and if that may not be, then to break down, all corporate 
associations of the people. To accomplish this, it has 
been the ordinary device of tyranny, to excite a false up- 
roar against one such corporate association, or class of as- 
sociations, so as to arouse the fears or jealousies of another 
association or class of associations, and thus to render the 
diverse elements of liberty the means of their reciprocal 
destruction. A striking instance of this comes to my re- 
membrance. When the Emperor Charles of Spain as- 
cended the throne of Castile, the nation possessed two 
prominent means of withstanding executive usurpation, — 
first, the Cortes^ a legislative body, — secondly, the com- 
unidades, or civic corj)orations. Charles played off one 
of these against the other, made war upon the cominieros, 
domineered over the Cortes, and so crippled both, as to 
leave his son Piiilip all but absolute ; and Spain has never 
rallied from the political degradation brought upon her in 
that disastrous period. Another remarkable instance of 
this occurs in the assaults of the two last Stuarts upon 
the corporations of Great Britain. Analogous facts 
abound, indeed, in the history of all almost every people. 
In pointing all the batteries of party-fury against the 
Bank, then, the Administration saw various of their sinister 
ends to be served. First, they were to destroy an insti- 
tution, which, being independent of them, was of course 
odious to them. Thus usurpation was to have its path 
cleared of one great obstacle. — 'J'hen, it was desirable to 
possess a topic (or tirades about money, moneyed influence, 
moneyed aristocracy, as the means of exciting jealousies 
of class among the laborious and the poor. Here were 



51 

men ruvelliiii; in tlic treasures of tlie luitiDii ; (•iijo)'iiig 
enormous salaries in the collection and sui)erinten(lence of 
the revenue ; emichin^ themselves with government-con- 
tracts; martiuiz; the public oflices to 'undeservers;' bloated 
as it were with bribes. How specially convenient was it 
for these men, to declaim against the corruptions of the 
Bank, and so hide their ow n iniquity under the visor of vir- 
tue, rolling up their eyes in hypocritical horror of the sins 
they falsely imputed to others, while they themselves were 
rotten to the core ! Corruptions of the Bank ! — Shame on 
the desperate hirelings, suborned to raise this factious cry 
ai2;ainst every freeman and every lover of his country, w ho 
disdains to wear on his neck the golden collar of the 
Treasury. They talk of corruption! Matchless impu- 
dence ! — What says the false Clo'ster ? — 

I do the wrong, and first begin to brawl ; 
The secret mischiefs, that I set abroach, 
1 lay unto the grievous charge of others; — 
And seem a saint when I most play the devil. 

And thus it is with the charges of the Administration 
against the Bank. — Finally, they took it up as a pretext, 
under cover of which to seize upon the i)ublic treasure, 
and thus make another advance in the march of usurpa- 
tion. 

Into the question of the legality of the fact or mode of 
removing the deposites of public revenue from the Bank 
of the United States, and its disastrous effects upon the 
national welfare, — there is no occasion for me to enter 
at large. It is not, you perceive, the purpose of my ar- 
gument to make a systematic arraignment of the Admin- 
istration. That were a task, fit to be done by one man 
among us, j^reeminently qualified for its performance. 
AVould that the caustic intensity, the unequalled experience 
and reading, the all-embracing comprehension, the burn- 
ing eloquence, of John Quincy Adams, were pledged to 
the great public duty of exposing the dangerous constitu- 



52 

tional doctrines of the President, — the false pretences 
and forfeited promises by wliicli he gained power, — his ap- 
pointments and removals from office, — his economy of ex- 
penditure, — his negotiations, — his dealings with Georgia, 
the Bank, the Post Ofiice, the public domain, the tariff, 
and internal improvements, — his successive cabinets, 
proper and improper, — in fine, all those pernicious meas- 
ures of misrule, which have signalized the career of the 
present Administration ! Nay, the best pens of the 
country might honorably unite in comnmnicating to the 
people, through the newspaper-press, a dignified and con- 
nected, but at the same time plain and popular, view of 
this whole subject. It is what is peculiarly needed at this 
crisis. — My plan is a more restricted one, aiming only to 
illustrate the question of executive usurpation, suggested 
by your Letter. 

It is pretty clear that the removal of the deposites was 
a blunder on the part of the President's advisers, arising 
from their inconceivable ignorance of the principles of cur- 
rency and trade. They had no distinct conception of the 
extent of public misery which must ensue ; had they done 
so, they would not have put their places in jeopardy by 
over-hasty audacity in crime. The President's responsi- 
ble cabinet foresaw the effects of it, cuid opposed it : but 
his irresponsible advisers prevailed. They were stu])id 
enough and mad enough to imagine that by removing the 
governnicnt-deposites they should break the Bank. So 
this could be done, — and thus their party-ends be promot- 
ed, and the vindictivcness of the President gratified by 
throwing to him a victim to devour, — they cared nothing 
for the loss of seven millions of dollars, stock in the Bank, 
belonging to the nation. ' Unless the Bank is broken 
down,' said the President to William J. Duane, ' it ^\\\\ 
break us down; if llie last Congress had remained a 
\ATek loniier in session, iwo thirds would have l)ecn sccur- 



53 

ed by corrupt means ; and the like result n»ay he ajipre- 
hcnded at tlic next Congress.' 

The Bank, therefore, was to be broken down, lest 
it should bribe the Administration members of Conf2;ress ; 
that is, diminish the number of the President's partisans. 
— Where, in the Constitution, docs he hnd it enjoined 
u])on the President to break down an institution, exist- 
ine: under a law of the United States ? Does he 
violate laws by virtue of the line which requires him 
to see that tlie laws be duly executed ? What law au- 
thorized him, on his responsibility, to remove the public 
money from the place where it was deposited by Con- 
gress ? — It was an illegal seizure of the public treasure. 
I hold the Resolutions of the Senate to be solemn truth, 
and the arguments of Binney, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, 
Adams, and others, upon this topic, to be unanswered 
and imanswerable. 

But no, say you, the removal was the lawful right of 
the President, who, as the executive authority, has exclu- 
sive custody and control of the public treasure. Then, I 
reply, if it be admitted for argument's sake to be legal, 
yet at all events it was a violent, unnecessary, unjust, un- 
justifiable stretch of executive authority ; and so, if not ac- 
tual usurpation, yet upon your own case it was the spirit 
and temper of usurpation. Not even the drilled majority 
of the House of Representatives, although endued with 
saintlike meekness and obsequiousness, and a capacity of 
licking the rod above all praise, not even they could be 
screwed up to the sticking point of boltins:: this portion of 
their lord and master's prescription. They perseveringly 
skulked the question of the sufficiency of the reasons as- 
signed for removing the dcposites, through all the by-paths 
and dark passages of parliamentary oblitjuity. It was, in- 
deed, cruel to ask of them to ratify directly the main rea- 
son of the removal, their own inipulcd vonaliu ; they 



54 



were willing to seal this charge indirectly, by sanctioning 
the removal ; but to do this directly and upon express 
vote, — by yea, and nay, and every pretty oath ! — that was 
passing the bounds of reasonable vassalage. Tory servil- 
ity hung its head in shame, passive obedience itself shycd 
0(1] in view of such crouched submission to the humbling 
behests of the President. 

Whether unconstitutionally, then, or only by a despotic 
abuse of constitutional power, — for one or the other it un- 
deniably was, — the President got possession of the public 
treasure. The use intended to be made of it, the use ac- 
tually made of it, we all know : To reward political par- 
tisans by giving to them the use of the public funds AAith- 
out interest, — to organize a great association of state- 
])anks, responsible only to the President, — and thus to 
forge a new set of golden fetters for the enslaving of the 
whole Union. But how much of that treasure has been 
squandered in perquisites and bribes, — we do not know. 
We feel, that the use of it is lost to the people, to whom, 
if left undisturbed in its lawful depository, it niiirht be 
loaned for employment in the business of life ; while, ut- 
terly unavailable as it now is to the people, its flights from 
one State to another, on the wings of transfer drafts, to 
sustain pet institutions here and there, are abundant evi- 
dence of its magic activity in the electioneering service 
of the Administration. 

Contemporaneously with these proceedings, the secon- 
dary circumstances, usually appertaining to the career ot 
an usurping chief magistrate, have distinguished the acts 
and writini^s of the Administration. One of the villainous 
badges of despotism is the existence of back-stair advisers, 
attaching themselves to power by mean and base arts, — 
cringing, busy, fawning, slaves, — parasites or bravos, — the 
cankers of a commonwealth. Such an. appendage, we 
know, clings to the skirts of the I'resident. And the per- 



55 

sonal ndiilation, lavished on the rrcsidcnt unto verv nau- 
sea, — the man-worship characteristic of his party, — is an- 
other of its anti-republican traits. This foot-stool-kissini^ 
spirit of theirs, by the way, — this their servility of adula- 
lation it was, — filling the object of it with such exaggerat- 
ed ideas of his own power, — which misled him into em- 
piiical experiments upon the rights and hap})iness of the 
people. 

And why should Ctcsar be a Ij-rant then ? 
Poor man ! 1 know lie would not be a wolf, 
But that he sees the Romans are but sheep : 
He were no lion, were not Romans liinds. 

And he himself, in official acts and in conversation, 
adopts the style and port of a master, lie needs no 
cabinet of constitutional advisers ; not he ; secretaries 
and clerks are sufficient for him. Then, the government 
is his government ; the secretaries of department are his 
secretaries ; they compose his cabinet ; all the public offi- 
cers, except the judges, are his personal servants, not the 
servants of the people and the laws. When the people 
repair to him with petitions, they are bid go home and 
work, and leave public afi'airs to him, who was ' born to 
command.' — He, Andrew Jackson, wills a thing, and 
therefore, right or wrong, it shall be done. The necessi- 
ties or sufferings of the people, are noihing to him ; the 
wishes of the Legislature nothing. His will is the law, — 
his experiment is to be tried, lawful or unlawful, and cost 
what it may to the nation. — Heretofore, it has been es- 
teemed the only policy consistent with republicanism that 
the Constitution and the laws should in seeming as in fact 
be the government of the Republic. In conformity where- 
with, Washington broke the dies having his effigy engrav- 
en upon them, and the features of personified Liberty only 
appear on our coin. But now, this wise policy is coming 
to be no longer observed. The Man who administers the 
executive authority is prominent in every thing, whiJe the 



56 

Constltiitiou and ilic laws are tlirown into the shade. 
The symbols of monarchy, witli its dialect, are insinuat- 
ing- themselves into the affairs of this Republic. Even 
she, conqueress of so many glorious fights, the pride of our 
gallant navy, — she, tlic triumphant mistress of the sea, 
who dissipated the charm of British ascendancy upon the 
Atlantic, in the blaze and smoke of her cannon, — the world- 
renowned Constitution herself, is made to bear on her 
brow the ignominious sign of servitude. — Are these the 
' shadows' cast before ' coming events ? ' For it is an 
omen of fearful import, that in the state-papers, speeches, 
essays and newspapers, emanating from the side of the 
Administration, whilst legislative assemblies in the ab- 
stract are the frequent theme of depreciation and scorn, all 
the courtly phrases of kingcraft are put in requisition to 
exhibit the excellence oi government by one man, and that 
man, Andrew Jackson. 

It remains only that I remark upon one other topic, as 
illustrative of the spirit and tendency of usurpation, ex- 
emplified in the conduct of the President, namely, his di- 
rect encroachments upon the constitutional authority of 
Coniiress. His disregard of the rii^hts of the Senate is 
no new trait of character. It is well remembered that, 
many years ago, he threatened, and seriously designed, to 
* cut off the ears ' of Abner Lacock, a member of the 
Senate, in revenge of acts done or words uttered by that 
Senator in his place. It is also remembered that Thomas 
Hart Benton, who certainly had ample means of personal 
knowledge, predicted that ' If General Jackson should 
ever be elected President of the United States, the Con- 
gressmen would have to legislate with pistols in tiicir 
belts.' And his first invasion of the constitutional rights of 
the Senate dates from the first week of his Administra- 
tion. The Constitution intended that the power of the 
Senate, in the appointment of public officers, should l)e 



0/ 

cu-cxicii.-sivc w illi that ol the President. He nominates : 
the Senate confirms. Eacli acts npon liis or its own 
judgement. Tlieir concurrent act makes the oflice. So it 
is with treaties. And, but for these checks on the power of 
the President, our government would l)e an elective 
monarchy. Tlie Constitution further provides that he shall 
liave power to fill, tem})oraril y, ' all vacancies that may 
hiippen during the recess of the Senate.' Of course, the 
Constitution, a\ hich did not even authorize removals ex- 
pressly, never dreamed that the President would create 
vacancies by removal of an incumbent, in order to make 
appointments in derogation of the Senate's constitutional 
authority. And yet the President has done this, not once 
or twice, but habitually, and as of system. You yourself 
have indicated this clause in the Constitution as suscepti- 
ble of executive abuse ; and have mentioned cases arising 
under it, which you deem dangerous abuses of power. 
Others, among the best friends or most fulsome flatter- 
ers of the President, — such as Thomas Ritchie and An- 
drew Stevenson, — were of the same opinion, as appeared 
in the published proceedings of the Senate on Mr. Ste- 
venson's nomination to England.* And I intreat you to 
turn you attention to the host of such cases, occurring, 
not upon the resignation or death of a public ofiicer, but 
u[)on the mere wanton exercise of the executive will. 
And to such flagitious extreme has the President pushed 
this form of usurpation, that we have recently seen three 
of the departments filled, by means of executive jugglery, 
for one whole year, without the approbation of the Sen- 
ate. Akin to which evasion of the constitutional author- 

* You signalize one abuse of power on the part of our national representatives 
in Europe, examples of wiiicli have fallen under my own observation, namely, 
dispensing tlie name and privileges of atlachi without due consideration, so that 
sonielimes it «feTolves on young men without any pretensions on the score of 
character, who are thus enabled to parade a false diplomatic dignity in France or 
Italy, very little to the honor of their country. 

8 



58 

ity of the Senate by dishonorable shifts and tricks of 
back-stair legerdemain, is the repeated nomination of re- 
jected individuals, such a nomination accompanied in one 
place with insulting impeachment of the Senate's right 
of independent opinion and action. The direct tendency 
of this encroachment, I repeat, is to make of the Presi- 
dent an elective monarch. 

I charge upon the Administration, you remember, a plan 
of usurpation, consisting in the abuse of the public rev- 
enues to cement together a corrupt combination of oftice- 
holders, made wholly dependent upon the President. The 
unsparing exercise of the questionable power of removal ; 
the appointment of political partisans only to office ; the 
creation of vacancies in the recess of the Senate ; the 
putting off the nominations to the Senate, until the closing 
days even of the long session ; and the assertion that all 
the officers of the government are the mere personal agents 
of the President : these acts and pretences constitute one 
part of the plan. Dovetailed into this part, was the other, 
which consisted in getting control of the public treasure, — 
squandering it in rewards bestowed on presses and persons 
meritorious in electioneering for the Administration, — 
using the Bank of the United States as a party-hack if 
possible, — if not, then a catenation of state-banks, — 
causing the Bank of the United States, or the state-banks 
as the case might be, to convert the credit-system of the 
country into a stupendous engine of electioneering, — and 
so devoting the public money, and all the credit capable 
of being raised upon it by bank-agency, to the perpetual 
and exclusive maintenance of a particular set of persons 
in the government of the Union. 

Of the incidental and subsidiary parts of this plan. 1 do 
not speak. For although the vindictive passions gratified. 
and the anti-social projects betrayed, in some of the pro- 
ceedings against the Bank, are curious and instructive in- 



69 

cidents in the history of the Adiirmistratioii, tliey are for- 
eign to the inquiry in hand ; and so are the details of cor- 
ruption, as exhibited in the Post Office and in ihc sul)- 
ordinatc offices of the Treasury Department. 

Nou", to give this plan of corruption the color of con- 
stitutional right, without which its authors well knew it 
would not be tolerated by any considerable body of the 
disinterested people of the country, it was necessary to 
put forward two false pretences, — one, that the President 
had, by the Constitution, absolute control of all j)ublic of- 
ficers, — another, that, by the Constitution, he had absolute 
and indefeasible control of the public treasure. These 
are the monstrous doctrines, audaciously avowed in the 
Protest. In which deplorable state-paper, also, these 
functions are scandalously claimed as a branch of royal 
prerogative acquired by descent or succession, as "• an ori- 
ginal* executive power,' left in the President's hands ' un- 
checked by the Constitution.' And to crown the whole, to 
give us a dictator in right good earnest, the President tells 
us that Ac, — not he and Congress, but he as distinguished 
from Congress, that is, he alone, — is ' the direct represen- 
tative of the American people.' If this be so, then he 
wants of king ])ut the name, and there is an end of the 
American Republic. 

Furthermore, it is to be noted, that the President does 
not content himself with claiming exclusive possession and 
control of the public treasure, the funds of the govern- 
ment in actual being ; but he arrogates and actually exer- 
cises the power to raise money on the public credit. The 
States and people of the Union gave to Congress alone, 

* ' The power of removal, wliich, like that of appointment, is an onic.i.VAL ex- 
ecutive power, is left unchecked by the Constitution, in relation to all executive 
officers, for whose conduct the President is responsible.' Andrew Jackson. 

'This change from immediate state of procuration and delegation to a course 
of acting as from original poirrr, is the way in which all the popular magistracies 
in the world have been perverted from their purposes ' Ed.mlnp Bcrke. 



60 

power ' to borrow money on the credit of tlie United 
States.' The provision is explicit. If the President may 
borrow money when he pleases, and bind the United 
States to repay the loan, it is evident that all the proper- 
ty and labor of the country are at his absolute disposal. 
Yet this braggart Administration, which has boasted year 
after year about paying off the national debt, as if it were 
a personal merit of the President, has the effrontery, in the 
face of all this, to borrow money, to a large amount, with- 
out authority of Congress, in order to squander it in pay- 
ment of electioneering services, through the agency of that 
pestilential reservoir of corruption, the Post Office De- 
partment. It is too late to say this was not the direct 
act of the President. Deliberately, — ostentatiously even, 
as if it were matter of pride to do wrong, — he assimies 
the responsibility for whatever is transacted in either 
of the departments. He tells us the public officers 
are all cap-in-hand subalterns, obeying his orders ; the sec- 
retaries are his secretaries. Of course, the impeachable 
misconduct of the Postmaster-General is the President's 
misconduct. Seeking to throw the odium of it on the 
Postmaster-General only, is unspeakably base and mean : 
its blazing ' glory' belongs to the entire Administration. 

Sir Robert Walpole's ministry is memorable as the era, 
when using the public treasure to make partisans became 
a methodical and regular business of administration in 
Great-Britain. Of such a state of things it was that Ju- 
nius said : ' Corruption glitters in the van, collects and 
maintains a standing army of mercenaries, and at the same 
moment impoverishes and enslaves the country.' It is to 
raise up, — not a true aristocracy, for that implies a gov- 
ernment by men possessed of some personal claims of dis- 
tinction, but — :\n oligarchy of placemen to govern the 
nation. They talk of a moneyed aristocracy, while they 
ihemselves constitute the very worst species of moneyed 



61 

aristocracy, because the money, wliicli feeds and upholds 
it, is not tlieir nioney, but tlie misapplied money of the ])eo- 
ple. AValpole professed to know every man's price. You 
may find his political theory in Lord Byron. 

'T is pleasant purchasing our fellow-creatures ; 

And all are to be sold, if you consider 
Their passions, and are dexterous ; some by features 

Are liouifht up, others by a warlike leader, 
Some by a place, — as tend their years and natures ; 

The most btj ready cash. — 

Walpolc dealt in ready cash, places, honors, as occasion 
served ; but he had not the advantage of making purchas- 
es with the glitter of ' a warlike leader.' In other re- 
spects, however, he proceeded in a way comprehensible at 
the present time ; for, as a standard historian tells us, ' close- 
ly connected with stock-jobbers, and other adventurers, in 
the acquisition of money, he found, through loans and oth- 
er government transactions, various opportunities of be- 
stowing indirect donatives ;' and so, by the dexterous man- 
agement of secret service money, and of the government 
patronage and contracts, he ' established an influence more 
dcspotical than the power which the most tyrannical of 
the Stuarts ever sought.' An influence, not founded on 
the wisdom of acts, nor measured by the limits of law, but 
derived from a corrupt and prodigal dispensation of the pub- 
lic treasure. And this exorbitant influence of the crown 
thus acquired, and wielded by an oligarchy, not adversely 
to the Crown, but in the name of the Crown for their joint 
benefit, was, you well know, a virtual subversion of the 
British Constitution. And the same thing, as practised 
here to the same eflect, is, in spirit and tendency, a sub- 
version of the American Constitution. 

Intelligent observers in Europe have justly remarked on 
the recent conduct of the President, as literally, and without 
exaggeration in j)hrase, monarchical. ' He appears to us,' 
says the London Courier, ' in the whole proceeding;, io have 



62 

preferred liis own convictions and views to tiie legally and 
constitutionally expressed opinion of his fellow-citizens ; 
acting rather as a European Sovereign than as the Head 
of a Representative Government.' — ' Certain it is,' says 
the London Globe, ' that no King in Europe could have 
ventured to so cavalierly treat the feelings and convictions 
of a large minority of his subjects, as the American Pres- 
ident has done those of the free citizens of the United 
States.' — And lest you should reject these opinions as be- 
ing the result of mere European prejudice and misconcep- 
tion, I would remind you that you yourself, in your Letter, 
say the President ' can do what the King of England can- 
not do.' — He has done, unconstitutionally, what the King 
of England dare not do constitutionally ; and he has been 
prompted to it, and borne out in it, by party-corruption. — 
Our hope rests in the virtue and intelligence of the people, 
to step forward for the salvation of their liberties. The will 
of one man, illegally exerted, and sustained by the arts and 
impositions of paid advocates, and mercenary party-mana- 
gers, has filled the country, from one end to the other, with 
misery and confusion. If we are ambitious to continue 
freemen, — if we desire to see prosperity and domestic 
peace restored to us, — it behoves us, in such constitution- 
al modes of action as remain to us, to arrest the career 
of executive usurpation, by stripping the Administration of 
its ill gotten dominion of the public offices and public 
treasure, the means whereby it reaches towards tyranny. 

For the President himself, the elected Chief IMagistrate 
of our common country, — would that his name had been 
permitted to descend to posterity unspotted by the bad 
uses, which bad men have made of it, — \\ould that he 
might even now abandon the misdirected career he has 
been prompted to tread, and consult only the true glory of 
himself and of the Republic ! 

No weight of popularity in \.\\v'u ruler, no artfully con- 



63 

ceived combinntion ol" corrupt inlluences, can an can this 
people from their devoted attachment to tlie liberties be- 
queathed them by their sires. — ' Fkee our land came 
down to us, and free it shall descend to our children."' — 
Persevering executive usurpations may, as here, break up 
the peaceful pursuits of industry, and throw the whole 
machine of society into confusion ; they may, as else- 
where, lead to civil strife and domestic bloodshed ; but 
not here, as elsewhere, can they succeed to their end. 
And brilliant in seeming as maybe the destiny of success- 
ful usurpers, think of the infamy of those who fail. Caesar 
mastered the liberties of his country, and is famous : had 
his fortune sunk at Pharsalia, he were but another Cati- 
line.* And, though all but impious to imagine of Wash- 
ington a purpose of tyranny, it is yet safe to say, that, if 
such a purpose could enter into his pure and noble spirit, 
and could he rise from the dead to accomplish it, the at- 
tempt would be utterly vain. The Union riven asunder 
by fratricido-arms, — long years of sanguinary contention, — 
this great Republic made the scorn of the world, — such 
are probable consequences of a scheme of usurpation per- 
tinaciously pursued by a popular party-chief; but ultimate 
success in it is not a possible consequence^ for so much as 
one of these twenty-four States. He that should first 
move in it, were he Washington himself, if he did not fall 
in the attempt, — jf he did not die the death of a felon 
with Iturbide and Guerrero, must live to see his utter 
failure, and to pine away at last under that broken-heart- 
edness of a glorious reputation srpiandered, which bore 
Bolivar to the gravef. 

* Nie sia alucno cbe s' inganni per la gloria de Cesare. Chi vuole conoscere 
qaello che gli scrittori liberi ne direbbono, vegga quello che dicono di Catilina. 
E tanto e piii detestabile Cesare, quanto piu c da biasimare quello che ha fatto, 
che quello che ha voluto fare un male. [Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra Tito Livio, 
1. 1. 

f One of the most patriotic and spirited compositions of the time is a piece, ea 



64 

III a|)i)roaching tlic close of tliis Letter, I desire to sub- 
join a word of qualification, touching the expressions here- 
in applied to the dealings of the Administration ^^ itli the 
newspaper-press. The President pays the advocates of 
liimself and his measures, not out of his own salary or 
patrimony, but out of my money and your money ; out of 
the contributions we have made, not to feed the rapacity 
of a party, but to defray the expenses of the government. 
Such an one shall issue a paper filled with virtuous in- 
dignation against the Bank ; but he holds some lucrative 
contract or well-paid office, by the tenure of concocting, 
and publishing a daily or weekly quota of electioneering 
falsehoods in his paper. This is thrice-distilled fraud. It 
is three-piled corruption. It is corrupt appropriation of 
the public treasure ; it is also an application of it to cor- 
rupt uses ; and it is over and above hateful, because being 
corruptly drawn from the treasury, and corruptly taken by 
the recipient, it is then by him corruptly employed to dis- 
seminate false intelligence among the people. I rejoice 
that the great body of the conductors of the press, de- 
spite the gilded lures lield out to them by the President, 
are patriotic and right-minded citizens, Avho, susceptible, 
as by the necessities of their position they must be, of 
strong impressions cither for good or bad, yet regard with 
honest indignation the flagitious conduct of those few 
among their number, who make it their business to gloss 
over misrule, and to fabricate false accusations of their 
opponents, for the stipend of the Administration. 

And a word of qualification, touching persons who liold 

titled, ' Esposicion de los Sentimientos de los Funcionarios Publicos, asi Nacion- 
nles como Departamentales y Municipaies, y demos Halitantes de la Ciud ad de 
Bogota, heclia para ser presentada al Libertador Presidente de la Republica,' 
wrilten to dinsiiade Bolivar from that series of unconstitutional acts, wiiicli ter- 
minated in the dissolution of tlie lle])ublic of Colombia. Had Bolivar listened to 
its tiirilling appeals, — had ho respected the riglitsof the Senate and of Congress, — 
had he scrupulously observed the Constitution of his country, — lie would not havo 
hopn doon\ed fo outlive his own honor and the integrity of the Republic. 



65 

office at the will of the rrcsidcMit, is also due to fairness 
and truth. In the expressions applied to them, I desire to 
be understood as speaking", not so much of individuals, as 
of the general spirit and inlluence of the system of party- 
rewards and punishments adopted by the Administration. 
Far be it from me to insinuate that there is any thing dis- 
honorable or corrupt in accepting executive offices, even 
those which are merely administrative, and which arc of- 
fices of emolument, not of honor. Some of the best 
men in the nation have held such offices. Originally they 
were bestowed as the rewards of virtue and patriotism, 
and earned by genuine merit. Nay, in the executive ser- 
vices of this Administration individuals now are not want- 
ing, distinguished by courage in the field, or wisdom in 
council, and fitted to adorn any station or oflice which 
their country can bestow. — Heretofore, all such officers, 
being appointed by the President and Senate concurrent- 
ly, and commissioned in the name of the United States, 
might well deem themselves honored in the places they 
occupied, as the ministers of the Constitution and of the 
People. But, as Americans, as freemen, as men of hon- 
or and conscious worth, do they not, — such of them as 
possess one spark of manly independence, — must they not 
feel insulted, degraded, by the arrogant pretensions of the 
President that they are merely his agents ? The servants 
of his caprice ? To truckle to his bidding like bond-slaves ? 
To have it their main official excellence to electioneer for 
Andrew Jackson, not to honor their country, or serve 
the American Union ? To have no conscience but his 
conscience ? No ^\ ill but his will ? — I apj)eal to them, 
the Forsyths, the Casses, the Millers, the McNeils, \\\\\ 
they not throw off the galling yoke of that ignominious 
Kitchen-Cabinct, which they were never born to wear ? 
For the rest, the rank and file of those holding offices of 
mere emolument, too many of tJiem asked for office as the 
9 



66 

specific pecuniary reward of party-services ; and in setting 
up tory newspapers, or busying themselves in elections, 
thev do but labor at their chosen vocation. Taui^ht by 
daily observation how ' tiirift may follow fawning,' and 
skilled by diligent practice ' to crook the pliant hinges of 
the knee,' they are Tories upon a nice calculation of profit 
and loss, in wear and tear of conscience and compensating 
orders on the Treasury. — Many others, doubtless, with 
better feelings and independent wishes, are forced to be 
co-workers in the system of corruption, sometimes by the 
overwhelming; tyranny of party-discipline, sometimes by 
the irresistible call of domestic exigencies. It is one of 
the detestable qualities of the system, thus to place honor 
and necessity in perpetual conflict. Good and bad are 
mixed up in the motives of men, as they are in the com- 
position of the great stream of life. Not a few public 
employes have given in to the corrupt maxims of their 
party-leaders from the mere habit of yielding support to 
government ; — contractors or others, who are in fact, and 
ought to be in principle, altogether above sacrificing their 
convictions of the true welfare of the country to the gam- 
bling schemes of a desperate cabal for power. — And I re- 
joice to know, that there are, in the ranks even of the great 
organized army of public office-holders, men, who appre- 
ciate and value their own respectability ; who bear in 
mind the pledge of the President not to bring ' the pat- 
ronage of the federal government into conflict wiih the 
freedom of elections ; ' who remember the terms of re- 
probation apjjlied by Thomas Jefterson to electioneering 
government officers ; and who accordingly devote them- 
selves to their official duties. Would that all were equal- 
ly pure and conscientious: then would the Administration 
stand or sink by its own deserts. 

Our i,a)vernment exhibits the straniic phenomenon, at 
the present time, of men totally without standing, general 



67 

qualifications, or a local consiitiicncy, wlio receive exor- 
bitant salaries in the post-oflice and customs, of three, 
four, iive, and si\ thousand dollars annually, for mere 
clerical or ministerial services in olTict", — when the judges, 
district-attorneys, many of the diplomatic agents of tlie 
country, and numerous other public ofticers, whose duties 
require the very highest order of intelligence and social 
standing, for the most part receive salaries and apjjoint- 
ments but just adequate to their bare subsistence. It 
needs no sphinx to unriddle the secret of this anomaly. 
And there is a remedy for this great plague-spot in the 
government. Let the Senate fearlessly discharge its consti- 
tutional duty. It has begun nobly. It has given a great 
example of its capacity to deal with those members of 
Congress, who misrepresent and oppress their constitu- 
ents, relying upon executive favor, and who legislate with 
the price of marketed patriotism in their pockets. Such 
men are commemorated by Iludibras, 

Who, by their precedents of wit 
T' out-fast, out-loiter, and out-sit, 
Can order matters underhand 
To put all business to a stand ; — 
Know what a leading voice is worth, 
A seconding, a third or fourth ; 
Hoic much a casting voice comes to, 
That turns vp trump, of ay, or no ; 
And, by adjusting all at th' end, 
Share every one his dividend. 

Let the Senate nobly proceed, as it has nobly begun. 
Durino; its late session, the Senate rejected seventeen nom- 
inations : it confirmed four hundred and forty-nine. 
Some of the spoilers have the cool impudence to speak 
of these acts of rejection, or part of them, us factious in 
the Senate. Why factious ? — Because, say they, the re- 
jections were party rejections. — Good. — The argument 
is worthy of its hireling authors. — They forget that an 
appointment consists of two parts, nomination and confir- 
mation, each equally essential with the other, and each 



68 

equally resting upon a separate will. The will to nomi- 
nate, and the will to confirm, should each depend upon 
the general and particular fitness of the nominee for the 
office to which he is named. — Is it faction for the Senate 
to deem corrupt Jacksonism unfitness ? Then it is equally 
faction for the President to deem Jacksonism fitness. — 
If party-motive be re])rehensiblc in the former, it is at 
least equally reprehensible in the latter , and so where 
the Senate has been factious seventeen times, the Presi- 
dent has been factious four hundred and sixty-six times. 
For the President to act in the system of removing faith- 
ful incumbents from office, in order to substitute in their 
place mere brawling partisans, — for him to contract for 
the purchase of factionaries, whether in Congress or out 
of it, — this, indeed, is the worst of all faction, because it 
is the establishment of a practical tyranny by the corrupt 
use of the nominating power. — ^Vhatever the Senators do 
or can do, constiiutionaUij, to cripple this machinery of 
executive usurpation by the proper use of the rejecting 
power, they are hound by their oaths and tiieir honor to 
do ; for if the President has a constitutional right to nomin- 
ate individuals to office because of their party-services, the 
Senate has exactly the same constitutional right to reject 
them because of the same party-services ; and thus we 
keep straight the balance of the Constitution. 

No man, or set of men, high or low, attached to the 
party in j)ower, has any right to complain of whatever 
severity of language applied to the corrupt use, which the 
Administration have made of the public funds. First, no 
severity of language can outgo the truth of the case. 
Then, being a truth of universal public concernment, it is to 
be published. And to publish it is but retributive Justice. 
For the last ten years, they and their orij:ans have been 
perpetually clamoring about corruption, it was shocking 
corruption in Adams to appoint one member of Congress 



69 

to ofifice where Jackson has appointed a do/en. Then, it 
was shocking corruption to pay a newspaper one dollar for a 
government advertisement, for whicli three times that sum 
shall now be paid. Then, it was shocking corru})tion for 
the government to expend thirteen millions annually : now 
it expends twenty-two millions. — It is shocking corrup- 
tion for a member of Congress to have a note discounted 
at the Bank of the United States ; but all right, for the 
Postmaster General or his subordinates to borrow money, 
or even receive presents, from mail-contractors who are 
suitors for extra-allowances. Newspapers, got up with 
government-funds subscribed by office-holders, and cor- 
ruptly sustained by official patronage, are incessantly 
charging other newspapers with bank-corruption. And 
as a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts, — a 
body totally independent of the Bank, and having nothing 
to gain or lose by it except as the whole country may gain 
or lose, — I treasure it in memory that when, last winter, 
that body raised its voice against executive usurpation, — 
there were men fattened upon the ' spoils of victory,' — 
men openly bought and sold in the market, and branded 
on the forehead with the broad-arroiv of the Treasury, — 
who, in a deliberate purpose of wanton falsehood, imputed 
bank-corruption to the members of that Legislature. At 
the present time, the presses of the Administration, — 
writhing under the recent exposure of the corruptions of 
the Post Office, — and having before them the unanimous 
vote of the Senate, condemning the open and gross 
violations of the Constitution committed by the Post- 
master-General, are yet pouring forth torrents of abuse 
against that magnanimous assembly, the last stay of the 
liberties of the Union. In denouncing the corru})tions of 
the Administration, then, — truly, although with language 
of indignant justice, — we do but ' plague the inventor' 
with his own devices, and commend the ' ingredients of 
his poisoned chalice' to his own lips. 



70 

Such, then, is the question of usurpation under our gov- 
ernment, — of comparative tendency in its parts to encroach 
one on the other, — as tried by the conduct of the pres- 
ent Administration. Its friends, its newspapers, its paid 
emissaries in taverns and at street-corners, are imputing 
encroachment to tlie Senate. That imputed encroach- 
ment consists, according to their and your showing, in 
uttering an opinion without, as you and they say, express 
or specific authority so to do, set down in the Constitu- 
tion. 

There is a short way to test the merits of the question. 
To begin, I challenge any impugner of the constitutional 
right of the Senate in passing the Resolutions under de- 
bate between us, to a fair comparison, item by item, of 
independent opinions uttered by the Senate as a body 
without express constitutional authority as to manner or 
fact, — and of opinions uttered by the President, not in 
loose conversation, but in solemn state-papers, which are 
in like manner unsanctioned as to manner or fact by express 
authority in the Constitution. Of such opinions on the 
part of the Senate, you will find, I think, two, between 
which there is no distinction in principle, but a re- 
markable distinction in one other respect. The Senate, 
by a majority vote, expressed an opinion, in the form of 
resolution, that in the removal of the depositcs the Pres- 
ident had acted 'in derogation' of the Constitution and 
laws. To this vote, a minority objects, as being a prema- 
ture and irregular decision of the Senate upon impeacha- 
ble matter. The same Senate, by an unanimous vote, 
expressed an opinion in the form of resolutions, that in 
borrowing money on the credit of the United States, the 
Postmaster-General had acted in violation of the Consti- 
tution. — What had become of the constitutional scruples 
of the minority ? — Is it not clear ? They dare not med- 
dle with the sacrosanct person of the President, the false 
idol of their worship ; but the Postmaster-General is made 



71 

of our own common earth ; and liini ihcy may touch. — 
Well, then, having set down both or neither of these two 
votes of the Senate on your side of the (juestion, proceed 
to consider the pronounced opinions of the President. 
Some of them, as the so called ' Ucad-to-the-Cabinet,' the 
Protest, the messages accompanying Mr. Clay's return- 
ed Land Bill, and the re-nomination of the Government 
Directors of the Bank, are, equally in matter and occasion, 
witlrout constitutional authoritv, beins; in truth mere elec- 
tioneering essays of the Kitchen-Cabinet, tricked off with 
the President's name for popular effect. Most of the 
many other executive state-papers, fabricated in his name 
by the same reputable craftsmen, are distinguished for 
this curious trait. During the ten or twelve years that 
the President has been prominently before the American 
people, whether as Chief Magistrate or as candidate for 
the office, he has, either in acts or words, pronounced a 
solemn judgement upon diametrically opposite sides of 
nearly all the great constitutional questions of the day ; 
deliberately contradicting, at some one time, whatever 
doctrine he may have deliberately affirmed at some other 
time. You may ascribe this to the make-shift schemes 
of unprincipled favorites practising upon the mind of their 
victim, — or to the capriciousness of change, which usually 
accompanies wilfulness of temper, as distinguished from 
the consistent comprehension and far-seeing perseverance 
of true moral greatness, — whichever alternative be most 
acceptable. It is hard if part of these opposite opinions 
of the President may not be counted on our leaf of the 
leger. One just half of them, it \\ould seem, arc uncon- 
stitutional. 

But, however this be, strike the balance as you 
please between the opinions of the Senate and of the 
President, and when you shall have pondered that balance 
well, proceed to a comparison of independent acts of the 



72 

Senate, and of independent acts of the President, per- 
formed without express authority from the Constitution. 
You shall find, if I mistake not, a reckoning against the 
President, in the ratio of thousands to none. Consider, 
also, that while the Senators, like the conscript fathers of 
the Roman Republic awaiting in their curule chairs the 
approach of the Gauls, sit in the Capitol defended only by 
the moral grandeur of their presence, as the representa- 
tion of the American States, — the President, on the other 
hand, comes to the conflict with an army of forty thousand 
mercenaries at his back, ready, it may be, with Brennus 
of. old, to fling his sword into the scales, and hold our lib- 
erties at a ransom, except there be some Camillus in 
reserve, vouchsafed by Heaven for the salvation of our 
Republic. Beside which, the President has at beck that 
long-sufTering majority of the House of Representatives, — 
Issachar-like, ' an ass crouching down betwixt' uncon- 
scionable ' burdens,' — composed of patent ' democrats,' 
disobeying the positive instructions of their constituents, 
or high-minded ' patriots,' acting against their known con- 
victions of the ])ublic good, out of disinterested respect 
for the will of the enlightened tenant of the White House.* 
These are plain elements for deciding the question of 
usurpation, commended to the consideration of all, who 
have consciences to feel, and heads to think. 

We, of the regicide race of the English Common- 

*' A vigilant and jealous eye over executory and judicial magistracy ; an anx- 
ious care of public money ; an openness approaching towards facility, to public 
complaint : these seem to be the true characteristics of a House of Commons. 
But an addressing House of Commons, and a petitioning nation ; a House of 
Commons full of confidence, when tlie nation is plunged in despair; in the utmost 
harmony with the ministers, whom the people regard with the utmost abhorrence ; 
who vote thanks, when the public opinion calls upon them for impeachments ; 
W'lio are eager to grant, when the general voice demands account ; who, in all 
disputes between the administration and the people, presume against Uie people ; 
who punisii their disorders, but refuse even to inquire into tlie provocations to 
them; this is an unnatural, a monstrous state of things in this Constitution.' 

Burke's Thoughts on tlie present Discontents. 



73 

wealth, with hlood ' fetched froiii Ihthers' not only ' of 
war-proof,' but of usurpation-prool", cliallengc and defy 
open assault on our liberties ; and as for insidious tyran- 
ny, whether it ai)proach us unseen along the slimy paths 
of reptile corruption, or boldly face its front with false 
colors of pretended patriotism, we trust ourselves in the 
keeping of that Providence, which brought hither men 
of such differing stock, united only by community of 
transatlantic wrongs, the Puritans of Massachusetts, the 
Catholicsof Maryland, the Huguenots of Carolina and New- 
York, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and made them 
to found this great Republic in the wilds of America. We 
believe, with them, that ' the wav^es of the sea do not 
more certainly waste the shore,' than power tends to en- 
croachment. Forewarned is forearmed. Maugre the for- 
ty thousand streams of corruption welling out over the 
country in golden sands from the copious fount of the 
Federal Treasury, there still remain those among us, who 
continue to hold in verdant honor the times, when our 
fathers stood on the ice-bound beach of Plymouth, or by 
the rude cliffs of Salem, ' with no benefactor around them 
but nature, no present sovereign but God.' Not all, who 
look forth from Boston to the lines of Dorchester and 
Charlestown, are yet recreant to the Whig spirit that 
breathes round about us from those inunortal heights ; not 
all, have sold their souls for a price to the service of Martin 
Van Buren. Doubtless every engine of imposition will 
be set in play by the Administration, to palliate its iniqui- 
ty, to disguise its tyranny, to conceal its corrnj)tion, from 
a suffering-roused and thoughtful people. But, though 
the millions, which our iiidustrv pours into the public 
chest, be returned upon us in lavish bribes for our destruc- 
tion, — though the Post Office and the Treasury scatter 
abroad their lie-stuffed sheets, like the falling leaves in 
autumn, thick enough to plaster every inch of the soil of 
10 



74 

America, with tiieir rottneness, stilJ, il we be but tiue to 
ourselves, true to the purity and lame of our fathers, we 
shall strike down that impersonated Corruption, which now 
rides roughshod over the people, and by its baleful influ- 
ence benumbs and deadens the best energies of the Re- 
public. 

To accomplish this, it needs but that the people under- 
stand the true facts of the case. The Chief Magistrate 
commits a mad assault upon our liberties and our means 
of subsistence, convulsing the whole Union with the an- 
guish of present misery and apprehension of greater 
coming wo. Pensioned editors and wealthy placemen 
tell us it is all as it should be, because Andrew Jackson 
has done it. These disinterested gentry, grown fat upon 
treasury-pap, laugh at the idea of a pressure in the money- 
market. — Good easy souls, plundering the Treasury with 
one hand, and the Post Oftice with another, what know 
or care they of public distress ? — Under the speciotis pre- 
text of driving corruption from the Capitol and the White 
House, as Ate was cast down from heaven, they have 
nearly doubled the public charges, and organized a system 
of pecuniary and party-corruption, worthy of the licen- 
tious courts of Euro})c. They, a mere oligcU'chy, banded 
together to convert themselves into a permanent privileged 
order, and stickling at no scruple of faith or honor in the 
perpetration of their flagitious plans, — they, forsooth, pre- 
tend, with brazen effrontery, to be the exclusive democ- 
racy of this Nation. But the truth can be not longer 
disguised. In the \\ anion ])ride of their self-intoxication, 
they and their master have done that, which compels men 
to thmk. Already, of thosi- who judge for themselves, 
there are two distinct parties in tlK; coimtry, the suffering 
people, and the full-f(;d office-holders. Is a newspaper clam- 
orous for Jackson? it derives its being, directly or indi- 
rectly, from the public treasure. — Is anelreti(iii pending P 



75 

Custom-house ullicers arc foreiiiosl in the work. — Is a 
memorial in favor of tlie President needed ? The Ad- 
ministration lias tools that can forge you a thousand suh- 
scribers to order. — These things, I say, are beginning to 
be understood ; and the people are rising in the majesty 
of their might to shake off this tyranny of the hireling 
Swiss Guards of the President. — Ere long, it will be 
deemed, as it ought, dishonorable, ignominious, to prosti- 
tute a })ublic office to the indiscriminate party-support of 
the Administration. 

Indeed, the wonder is, how any man of honor and 
worth can palliate, to his own sense of self-respect, the 
participating personally in such a corrupt system, ^^hatis 
it, but to barter the birthright of one's liberties for a mess 
of pottage ? In that exquisite Virgilian episode of the 
descent of iEneas to the Shades, which Bishop "NVarbur- 
ton justly esteemed one of the noblest pieces in the whole 
range of uninspired composition, there is mention of them, 
who lend their aid to schemes of usurpation for sordid in- 
ducement. 

Vendidit hie auro patriain, dominumque potentem 
Iniposuit. 

And where is he, ivho sold his counlnj for gold, and im- 
posed on it a poiverjid master? Is it not amid the shrieks 
of agony, the dull-echoing lash, the clank of chains, ever 
sounding up from the realms of Gnossian Rhadamanthus ? 
Beside the mantling cup which Tantalus may not touch, 
Ixion's revolving wheel, the still-impending cliff of the 
Lapithne, the rock of Sisyphus perpetually rolled up in 
vain, the unsated vulture gnawing at tlic heart of 
Tityus ? — This, poetic fiction though it be, is the expres- 
sion of the unbiased judgement of mankind touching cor- 
rupt support of an usurping chief magistrate. 

And I call upon you, — you, who, in the Spy, have car- 
ried back our imaiiinations to the morning of our indepen- 



76 

dence, — who, and in the Pioneers and the Prairie, have 
so admirably illustrated the manners and the history 
of the people of this Continent, — who, in the Ileiden- 
mauer, the Bravo, and tlic Headsman, have given great 
lessons of social wisdom, — who, in the Notions of the 
Americans, have deliberately assumed the defence of our 
institutions, — I call upon you, a Republican and an Ameri- 
can, — not to throw your weight into the scale of executive 
encroachment. I know that minstrel voices are too prone 
to sing the praises of power. They not always love the 
empire of the people. The lordly dais, the pomp of courts, 
the largesses of the great, pensions, and epicurean ease, 
are not without a charm for over-fanciful minds. But you, 
a liberal in principle, are not of such as they. — Join your- 
self, then, to the friends of liberty and their country, who, 
drawn forth out of their retirement in thousands by the 
impending peril of the Constitution, are rallying on all 
sides to rescue our Ark of Covenant from the usurpicg 
and sacrilegious hands of the Administration. 

One of your Countrymen. 



I 



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